Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics)

by Stefan Zweig

But right up to the very day of the wedding he lived in a state of constant fear that today, tomorrow, or the day after, she might, in horror, withdraw her confidence from him. Whereas she, for her part, who day in, day out, for twelve years, had been accused of incompetence, stupidity, malice and narrow-mindedness, by that old monster her former mistress, whose devilish tyranny had shattered what self-confidence she had ever had, expected to be stormed at incessantly, sneered at, scolded, humiliated by her new lord and master. From the very outset she resigned herself to a life of slavery, as though to an inevitable fate. But lo and behold! Everything she now did was right; the man into whose keeping she had given her life thanked her every day afresh, treated her always with the same shy reverence. The young woman was astounded; she could not comprehend so much tenderness.