Kroll. I did not doubt it either, at the time.
Rosmer. Of course not. It was impossible to doubt it,
unfortunately. You remember what I told you of her ungovernable,
wild fits of passion--which she expected me to reciprocate. She
terrified me! And think how she tortured herself with baseless
self-reproaches in the last years of her life!
Kroll. Yes, when she knew that she would always be childless.
Rosmer. Well, think what it meant--to be perpetually in the
clutches of such--agony of mind over a thing that she was not in
the slightest degree responsible for--! Are you going to suggest
that she was accountable for her actions?
Kroll. Hm!--Do you remember whether at that time you had, in the
house any books dealing with the purport of marriage--according to
the advanced views of to-day?
Rosmer. I remember Miss West's lending me a work of the kind. She
inherited Dr. West's library, you know. But, my dear Kroll, you
surely do not suppose that we were so imprudent as to let the
poor sick creature get wind of any such ideas? I can solemnly
swear that we were in no way to blame. It was the overwrought
nerves of her own brain that were responsible for these frantic
aberrations.
Kroll. There is one thing, at any rate, that I can tell you now,
and that is that your poor tortured and overwrought Beata put an
end to her own life in order that yours might be happy--and that
you might be free to live as you pleased.
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