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be offered a sacrifice to her love—too often of mere position. These vague apprehensions, added to the fatigues of preparation of her wedding outfit, have produced in her the very acme of bodily and mental exhaustion; she is jaded and worn out, but, above all, frightened. The one thing in all this world of which she is least capable at this moment is the faintest spark of sexual passion. The man may be by nature kind, considerate, and loving, but the whole tenor of his thoughts and experiences on this subject are connected with violence—indeed, dynamic consummation is, as he falsely believes, the true idea of mercy. And with this disparity between the forces—shrinking timidity and ungoverned boldness—the match anticipated by Juliet, is won and lost. Lost indeed for the poor creature left mangled and terrified—nay, infinitely disgusted! Love, affection even, are well-nigh crushed out of the stricken woman, whose mental ejaculation, "O, that I had not married!" is the key-note to her whole after-existence. And so, through the long hours of that dreary night, she listens to the heavy respirations of her gross companion, whose lightest movement causes her to shrink with terror. She is fortunate, indeed, if her miseries be not renewed ere she escapes from the "bridal chamber;" and the day which follows, filled as it is with forebodings of the coming night, seems all too short for the contemplations and the resolutions which crowd upon her. Far from friends and kindred, with no sympathizing one to whom she can tell a word of her strange sorrow, with him who is miscalled her protector, revealing, by his every look and act, the bestial thoughts which fill his breast, what wonder is it that twenty-four hours of marriage have been more prolific to her of loathing than the whole previous courtship of love!
