"Did he tell you that? Dear me, he must be a most extraordinary man."
"I understand it perfectly—I know what he means. When we love one another we are not responsible; something in us makes us do it. When we leave off loving—when we get dissatisfied—we can't help it either. It is nature that tells us to do the one as well as the other; and nature should be obeyed, Roden says."
Mrs. Reade made no comment upon this, but thought to herself that it was a remarkably wise provision of nature—under the circumstances—that her devotee was endowed with the courage of his convictions.
"It is very hard for me now, but it is the truest kindness and gentleness on his part," the girl went on, with a tremor in her quiet voice. "He knows we understand each other better than any one else can do. I think some day he will come and tell me all about it—when he thinks I can bear it; how he could not help it; that that other woman's memory was more to him than any new love a few days old could be, and how he was true to her and to himself, and to me, not to wrong any of us any further to gratify my foolishness. It will be something of that sort, I know; it will be nothing that is a disgrace to him. Ah, Beatrice, you think I am talking childish nonsense, I see it in your face."
"I certainly do, my dear. I think you are fully qualified for admission into the Yarra Bend, if you wish for the candid truth."
"No; you don't know him, and I do. I am puzzled, I don't deny that I am puzzled a little; but I trust him. He may do what he likes; I shall never think that he will do anything wrong. Some day it will be explained, and I shall see that he was right. I shall love him the more for not being afraid to break off with me when he felt it was a mistake. Under any circumstances I love him too well not to be thankful I am spared the misery of seeing him suffer from an irksome marriage that could not satisfy him. And love—as he and I understand love—would be degraded by vulgar efforts to keep it under lock and key."
"I don't know whether it occurs to you," remarked Beatrice, with her head on one side; "but it is a very dangerous doctrine that you and Mr. Dalrymple seem to believe in. Logically worked out, it leads—goodness knows where it doesn't lead to."
The blood flew over the girl's pale face. She was the most sensitively delicate, the most maidenly, of girls; and she scented a meaning in her cousin's words that shocked her terribly.
"I am sure that cannot be," she said, with a majestic gentleness that was full of severe reproach.
"You don't imply that husbands and wives, when they are tired of each other—or even when only one is tired—are at liberty to make fresh combinations?"