She had read few novels,
so that the idea of a pure and constant love succeeding the sound
of wedding bells had never been very much presented to her. She
went, numbed and terrified, to the Mother Superior of her
childhood's convent with the tale of Edward's infidelities with the
Spanish dancer, and all that the old nun, who appeared to her to
be infinitely wise, mystic and reverend, had done had been to
shake her head sadly and to say:
"Men are like that. By the blessing of God it will all come right in
the end."
That was what was put before her by her spiritual advisers as her
programme in life. Or, at any rate, that was how their teachings
came through to her--that was the lesson she told me she had
learned of them. I don't know exactly what they taught her. The lot
of women was patience and patience and again patience--ad
majorem Dei gloriam--until upon the appointed day, if God saw
fit, she should have her reward. If then, in the end, she should have
succeeded in getting Edward back she would have kept her man
within the limits that are all that wifehood has to expect. She was
even taught that such excesses in men are natural, excusable--as if
they had been children.
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