But then I think, No, you cannot train him as
you wish. Your husband will have rights to the child, rights
superior to your own. Then I foresee the most dreadful strife
between us.
"A shrewd girl-friend once told me that I ought to be better or
worse; I ought not to see people's faults as I do, or else I ought
to love people less. And I can see that I ought to have been too
good to make this marriage, or else not too good to make the best of
it. I know that I might be happy as Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, if I
could think of the worldly advantages, and the fact that my child
will inherit them. But instead, I see them as a trap, in which not
only ourselves but the child is caught, and from which I cannot save
us. Oh, what a mistake a woman makes when she marries a man with the
idea that she is going to change him! He will not change, he will
not have the need of change suggested to him. He wants _peace_ in
his home--which means that he wants to be what he is.
"Sometimes I can study the situation quite coolly, and as if it
didn't concern me at all. He has required me to subject my mind to
his. But he will not be content with a general capitulation; he must
have a surrender from each individual soldier, from every rebel
hidden in the hills.
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