A long article Elizabeth wrote during this fraught period offers a window into her state of mind. In “When to Cast Out, Give Up, Let Go,” she likens the “pinching shoe, the single glove” that women often hang on to despite their uselessness to “the longings, the clingings” of women’s inner lives.113 She writes of “painful memories . . . enshrining resentments and long, futile angers” that only forgiveness would allow women to relive “without desperation.” In her view, “the inclination to repeat our grievances, to insist that payment is always due us . . . is an indulgence that everyone must sooner or later give up.” Elizabeth concludes that by throwing away “one-sided love,” women can attain “a true condition of ‘loving’ someone who has long ago treated us badly. Then affection is not a weird, ambivalent manipulation of the death of love, but a sort of salute to its happier beginning.” This extraordinary essay suggests an answer to those who wonder how she could have loved and stayed with Cal all those years: “To think about a troubled person is to ask . . . where does he hurt and how can it be changed? . . . Sympathy is a gift, sometimes almost an occupation.” Elizabeth’s ultimate loyalty was to an ethical ideal: “Always what is most important in one’s personal life is to forgive the unforgivable.”