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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: receiving such a message at night-fall from a man living twenty
miles away, to whom she had no means of sending a warning. . .
She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of
her cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being,
that evening, too kind to her husband. She could not ply him
with wine, according to the traditional expedient, for though he
drank heavily at times he had a strong head; and when he drank
beyond its strength it was because he chose to, and not because a
woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any rate--she was an old
story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there was no feeling
for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposed
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