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25. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my mistress being
torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which
clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding. And she went
back to Africa, making a vow unto Thee never to know another man,
leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy one, who
could not imitate a woman, impatient of delay, since it was not until
two years' time I was to obtain her I sought, being not so much
a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, procured another (not a
wife, though), that so by the bondage of a lasting habit the disease
of my soul might be nursed up, and kept up in its vigour, or even
increased, into the kingdom of marriage. Nor was that wound of mine
as yet cured which had been caused by the separation from my former
mistress, but after inflammation and most acute anguish it mortified,
and the pain became numbed, but more desperate.
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