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with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and
person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of
her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I
remembered I had once been her husband- that recollection was then,
and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while
she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife;
and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied
to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as
long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus,
at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.
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'One night I had been awakened by her yells- (since the medical men
had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)- it was a
fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently
precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in
bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like
sulphur-steams- I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes
came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I
could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake- black
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