Free Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

Would not she regard him as much more honourable in doing so than in adhering to a marriage which was distasteful to him? And if she would so judge him, –judge him and certainly acquit him, was it not reasonable that she under similar circumstances should expect a similaracquittal? Then she declared to herself that she carried on this argument within her own breast simply as an argument, induced to do so by that assertion on his part that he was already her husband, – that his house was even now her home. She had no intention of using that power which was still hers. She had no wish to go back from her pledged word.She thought that she had no such wish. She lovedhim much, and admired him even more than she loved him. He was noble, generous, clever, good, – so good as to be almost perfect; nay, for aught she knew he was perfect Would that he had some faults! Would that he had! Would that he had! How could she, full of faults as she knew herself to be,–how could she hope to make happy a man perfect as he was! But then there would be no doubt as to herpresent duty. She loved him, and that was everything. Having told him that she loved him, and having on that score accepted his love, nothing but a change in her heart towards him could justify her in seeking to break the bond which bound them together. She did love him, and she loved him only.
    But she had once loved her cousin. Yes, truly it was so. In her thoughts she did not now deny it. Shehad loved him, and was tormented by a feeling that she had had a more full delight in that love than in this other that had sprung up subsequently. She had told herself that this had come of her youth; – that love at twenty was sweeter than it could be afterwards. There had been a something of rapture in that earlier dream which could never be repeated, – which could never live, indeed, exceptin a dream. Now’ now that she was older and perhaps wiser, love meant a partnership, in which each partner would be honest to the other, in which each would wish and strive for the other’s welfare, so that thus their joint welfare might be insured. Then, in those early girlish days; it had meant a total abnegation of self. The one was of earth, and therefore possible. The other had been a ray fromheaven, – and impossible, except in a dream.
    And she had been mistaken in her first love. She admitted that frankly. He whom she had worshipped had been an idol of day, and she knew that it was well for her to have abandoned that idolatry. He had not only been untrue to her, but, worse than that, had been false in excusing his untruth. He had not only promised falsely, but had made such promiseswith a deliberate, premeditated falsehood. And he had been selfish, coldly selfish, weighing the value of his own low lusts against that of her holy love. She had known this, and had parted from him with an oath to herself that no promised contrition on his part should everbring them again together. But she had pardoned him as a man, though never as a lover, and had bade him welcome again asa cousin and as her friend’s brother. She had again become very anxious as to his career, not hiding her regard, but professing that anxiety aloud. She knew him to be clever, ambitious, bold, – and she believed even yet, in spite of her own experience, that he might not be bad at heart Now, as she told herself that in truth she loved the man to whom her troth was plighted, I fear that she almost thoughtmore of that other man from whom she had torn herself asunder.
    ‘Why should he find himself unhappy in London?’ she said, as she went back to the letter. ‘Why should he pretend to condemn the very place which most men find the fittest for all their energies? Were I a man, no earthly consideration should induce me to live elsewhere. It is odd how we differ in all things. However brilliant mightbe his own light, he would be contented to hide it under a bushel!’
    And at last she recurred to that matter as to