"But--you see, there's the question of neighbours and society--what
will happen if everybody--"
"Oh, I am not going to be a philosopher any longer! I only see
what's under my eyes."
"Well--I don't agree with your instinct, Dick!" said Gillingham
gravely. "I am quite amazed, to tell the truth, that such a sedate,
plodding fellow as you should have entertained such a craze for a
moment. You said when I called that she was puzzling and peculiar:
I think you are!"
"Have you ever stood before a woman whom you know to be intrinsically
a good woman, while she has pleaded for release--been the man she has
knelt to and implored indulgence of?"
"I am thankful to say I haven't."
"Then I don't think you are in a position to give an opinion. I
have been that man, and it makes all the difference in the world, if
one has any manliness or chivalry in him. I had not the remotest
idea--living apart from women as I have done for so many years--that
merely taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger
could by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous
tragedy as that now shared by her and me!"
"Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, provided
she kept to herself. But to go attended by a cavalier--that makes a
difference."
"Not a bit. Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her
present misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him?
All that is a question for herself. It is not the same thing at
all as the treachery of living on with a husband and playing him
false... However, she has not distinctly implied living with him
as wife, though I think she means to... And to the best of my
understanding it is not an ignoble, merely animal, feeling between
the two: that is the worst of it; because it makes me think their
affection will be enduring. I did not mean to confess to you that in
the first jealous weeks of my marriage, before I had come to my right
mind, I hid myself in the school one evening when they were together
there, and I heard what they said. I am ashamed of it now, though
I suppose I was only exercising a legal right. I found from their
manner that an extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, entered into
their attachment, which somehow took away all flavour of grossness.
Their supreme desire is to be together--to share each other's
emotions, and fancies, and dreams."