I did a great wrong.

If my lord would but beat me till the blood runs down, it would be a joy to me." It was the cry of justice making itself heard through her dull soul.

It was the instinctive demand for atonement.

It was the unconscious appeal for reinstatement to the privileges of wifehood.
"Woman," he said sternly, "a man may beat his wife.

He will not strike a woman that is nothing to him.