She ended with nothing, and she had done it entirely to herself, and there was no satisfaction in it, only a kind of quiet grief for all of it.

I have been asked, since, whether I hate her, and the honest answer is that I do not, and not out of any special virtue on my part.

It is simply that hatred requires a kind of ongoing attention that I was not willing to give her.

She had already taken seventeen months of my life and very nearly my father’s legacy; I was not going to hand her my peace as well by carrying her around inside me for years.

What she did was wrong, and it was right that she answered for it under the law.