"Do you?"
"Lydia," said he, "you don't understand. I told you you couldn't. It's only that my sentence wasn't over when I left prison. It's got to last, because I was in prison."
"Oh, no! no!" she cried.
"I've muddled my life from the beginning. I was always told I could do things other fellows couldn't. Because I was brilliant. Because I knew when to strike. Because I wasn't afraid. Well, it wasn't so. I muddled the whole thing. And the consequence is, I've got to keep on being muddled. It's as if you began a chemical experiment wrong. You might go on messing with it to infinity. You wouldn't come out anywhere."
"You think it's going to be too hard for us," she said, with a directness he thought splendid.
"Yes. It would be infernally hard. And what are you going to get out of it? Go away, Lydia. Live your life, you and Anne, and marry decent men and let me fight it out."
"I sha'n't marry," said Lydia. "You know that."
He could have groaned at her beautiful wild loyalty. The power of the universe had thrown them together, and she was letting that one minute seal her unending devotion. But her staunchness made it easier to talk to her. She could stand a good deal, the wind and rain of cruel fact. She wouldn't break.
"Lydia," said he, "you are beautiful to me. But I can't let you go on seeming beautiful, if—if you're so divinely kind to me and believing, and everything that's foolish—and dear."
"You mean," said Lydia, "you're afraid I should think wrong thoughts about you—because there's Esther. Oh, I know there's Esther. But I didn't mean to be wicked. And you didn't. It was so—so above things. So above everything."