"I can't explain it to you, Hugh, if you don't see it already. It's a difference of tradition."
"But what's difference of tradition got to do with love? Since you admit that you love me, and I certainly love you—"
"Yes, I admit that I love you, but love is not the only thing in the world."
"It's the biggest thing in the world."
"Possibly; and yet it isn't necessarily the surest guide in conduct. There's honor, for instance. If one had to take love without honor, or honor without love, surely one would choose the latter."
"And what would you call love without honor in this case?"
I reflected. "I'd call it doing this thing—getting engaged or married, whichever you like—just because we have the physical power to do it, and making the family, especially the father, to whom you're indebted for everything you are, unhappy."
"He doesn't mind making you and me unhappy."
"But that's his responsibility. We haven't got to do what's right for him; we've only got to do what's right for ourselves." I fell back on my maxim, "If we do right, only right will come of it, whatever the wrong it seems to threaten now."
"But if I made ten thousand a year of my own—"