"Hardly perfect, because she is a human being. But although I know her virtues I have not known her faults. It may be that she is too proud,—a little unwilling, perhaps, to bend. Most women will bend whether they be in fault or not. But would you wish your wife to do so?"
"I, at any rate, have not asked her."
"You, at any rate, have not given her the opportunity. My accusation against you is, that you sent her away from you on an accusation made solely by that man, and without waiting to hear from herself whether she would plead guilty to it."
"I deny it."
"Yes; I hear your denial. But you will have to acknowledge it, at any rate to yourself, before you can ever hope to be a happy man."
"When he wrote to me, I believed the whole story to be a lie from first to last."
"And when you found that it was not all a lie, then it became to you a gospel throughout. You could not understand that the very faults which had induced her to break her engagement were of a nature to make him tell his story untruly."
"When she acknowledged herself to have been engaged to him it nearly broke my heart."
"Just so. And, with your heart broken, you would not sift the truth. She had committed no offence against you in engaging herself."
"She should have told me as soon as we knew each other."