i struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. i wrote mary some violent and bitter letters. i treated her as though she alone were responsible for my life and hers; i said she had diverted my energies, betrayed me, ruined my life. i hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary, shameless. someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your power of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, and it is not the least of all the things i owe to mary that she understood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. i tried twice to go and see her. but i do not think i need tell you, little son, of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. an angry man is none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. the hope that had held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts and emotions lay scattered in confusion....
you see, my little son, there are two sorts of love; we use one name for very different things. the love that a father bears his children, that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness and tenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspect of one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue and unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity of some wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears, that is love—like the love god must bear us. that is the love we must spread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind, that will some day reach out to all mankind. but the love of a young man for a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and complete assurance. my love for mary was a demand, it was a wanton claim i scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness she gave me. i see now that as i emerged from the first abjection of my admiration and began to feel assured of her affection, i meant nothing by her but to possess her, i did not want her to be happy as i want you to be happy even at the price of my life; i wanted her. i wanted her as barbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. it was a flaming jealousy to have her mine. that granted, then i was prepared for all devotions....
this is how men love women. almost as exclusively and fiercely i think do women love men. and the deepest question before humanity is just how far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. the fierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart of all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern life that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men. that is why we compete against one another so bitterly, refuse association and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existence hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turn would if they could hamper and subordinate the men—because each must thoroughly have his own.
and i knew my own heart too well to have any faith in justin and his word. he was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest until some day he had all. i had seen him only once, but the heavy and resolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in my memory.
if he was cruel to mary, i told her, or broke his least promise to her, i should kill him.
