The spirit may indeed be willing, but the flesh is lamentably weak.

The appetites that have been long indulged do not relinquish their claims after only a few months' restraint, and when the girl for whose sake they have been repressed is won, they will return to the swept and garnished room, and the last end of their victim will be worse than the first.
I often wonder what a good, pure woman promises herself when she proposes to entwine her clean life with one that is scarred, seamed and blackened.

Evade the truth as she may, there are but two courses for her to pursue.

She must either live a lonely life apart from her husband's, frowning down, or silently showing disapproval of his habits, or she must, to preserve peace and the semblance of happiness, bring herself down to his level and become even less delicate and more degraded than he.

For is not a coarse woman always more abhorrent than a coarse man?
There are the instincts of her entire moral and physical nature to be cast aside before she can descend to vulgarity.
In the one case her husband will hate her, while in the other she will lose his respect and will despise herself.
An evil life so blunts the conscience that the wife of an unreformed man need hardly expect him to be faithful to her.