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"What do you mean by your temptation?"

"I feel tempted to complain of my lot, and to impatiently wish to be delivered out of the power of my persecutors. Doctor, I do so want my freedom! But I am not tempted to desire it at the expense of my conscience, that is, I am not tempted in the least by a desire to return to my husband, nor could any influence tempt me to do this deed, since for me it would be a sin against God to do so."

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"Do right; by letting me have my liberty to support myself as other wives do who cannot live with their husbands."

"The only right course for you is to return to your husband and do as a true woman should do; be to him a true and loving wife, as you promised to be by your marriage vow, unto death, and until you do consent to do so, there is no prospect of your getting out of this place! For until you will give up this insane, unreasonable notion of your duty forbidding it, I consider this institution the proper place for you to spend your days in, for you must be maintained somewhere, by charity, if if it is not true, as you pretend, that you have helpers outside who promise you pecuniary aid, but give neither you nor me a guarantee to that effect."

"I do not feel that I am an object of charity so long as I have health and abilities to render me self-reliant; although I know my situation is a very unpleasant one for a woman, re-ported to be lost to reason, to contend with. For who will desire or employ an insane person as housekeeper, cook, nurse or teacher; still I could try, and if I did not succeed I could drop into a poor-house, such as the laws of the State provide for the indigent to die in."

"What poor-house?"

"Jacksonville, if I could get no further."

"No, you have no claim there."

"Manteno, then."

"No, you are not a woman who can be trusted, for your own conduct here has proved you to be entirely unworthy of trust or confidence. You have abused the trust I have reposed in you, and betrayed me in every possible way by mis-representation and abuse. You have proved to me that you are all that your husband represents you to be, that he is an in-jured and abused man, and you are a worthless woman, for it is impossible for your husband to be such a man as you re-present him to be and sustain the spotless character, as a minister, which he does and always has."

"Don't I know, Doctor, a little more of his private character, as a husband, than any other one? and is it not possible for one to assume a false character abroad? Has not the fall of many good man, reported above censure, proved that it is sometimes the case?"

"No, I think it is impossible for your account of him to be a true one, and I regard this institution as the only fit place for you, so long as you are not willing to return to him."

"Is it right, here in America to coerce a woman's conscience, compelling her to do what she believes to be wrong? My views of my personal duty are the rule for me, as your views are for you. I regard it as persecuting Christianity thus to treat me, and that the cloak of insanity is the only legalized popular mode of doing it at the present day."

"No, Mrs. Packard, you are talking unreasonably, in an insane manner, and all reasonable people will call it so, for you to so represent duty; and so long as you hold on to these views there is no hope for a change that I can see."

"Now I understand you. Now I am satisfied -- for the reality, however painful, is far less unbearable than suspense. I now know what Mrs. Hosmer told me is true, although I was loth to believe you were so entirely lost to justice and honor. She said there was no hope of my getting out of this institution so long as you superintended it."

"Did Mrs. Hosmer say so?"

"She did."

He then tried to qualify what he had said. He did not seem to like to have me cherish that view exactly, but how he meant to qualify it I could not understand.

I know that the utterance of simple unqualified truth is the hardest language which can be employed. But on this simple weapon of naked truth I intend to rely for my own defence and protection. The world may credit or discredit my state-ments, just as they please; my responsibility is done with the utterance of the simple truth.

The superintendence of another's conscience is not my work. God forbid that I ever put forth my hand, Uzzah like, to steady the conscience of another, since I know that God alone claims the right to protect his own sacred ark. I intend no man or woman shall ever steady my own. This is God's exclusive work.

My journal, two weeks after, says;

I have been in bed for a few days to rest my brain by sleep and sitz-baths. The means have been blessed and I am better. For about two weeks I have been afflicted with a headache most of the time.

This is something new for me. I scarcely ever had a head-ache in all my life. Indeed I hardly know what pain of body is, I am so blessed with such sound and vigorous health. But when the doctor told me I must return to my husband or die here, it cost me a mental struggle which has prostrated me upon this sick bed.