"Margaret, do not be hard. And now, when I know—"
"You do believe me, then?" she interrupted, with winning sweetness.
"Yes, I believe you! It makes me tremble to think what it would be if we were married; they say people do not die of joy."
She came out of her trance. Her face changed, apprehension returned—the old fear and pain. She rallied her sinking courage. "We will not talk of things that do not concern us," she said, gently. "All my life—that is, the peace of it—is in your power, Evert, now that you know the truth about me. But I am sure I have not put faith in you in vain."
"Don't you remember saying to me 'Do you wish me to die without ever having been my full self once?' So now I say to you, Margaret, do you wish to die without ever having lived? You have never lived yet with anything like a full completeness. I am not a bad man, I declare it to you, and you are the most unselfish of women; you have a husband who has no claim upon you, either in right or law; Margaret, let us break that false tie. And then!—see, I do not move a step nearer. But I put it before you—I plead—"
"And do you think I have not felt the temptation too?" she murmured, looking at him. "When Lanse left me, over there on the river, don't you remember that I went down on my knees? It was the beating of my heart at the thought of how easily after that I could be freed—freed, I mean, by law—that was what I was trying to pray down. To be free to think of you, though you should never know it, even that would have been like a new life to me."
"Take it now," said Winthrop. He grasped her hand.
But she drew it from him. "Surely you know what I believe, what all this means to me—that for such mistakes as a marriage like mine there is, on this earth at least, no remedy."
"We'll make a remedy."
Again she strengthened herself against him. "Do you think that a separation—I will use plain words, a divorce—is right when it is obtained, no matter what the outside pretext, to enable two persons who have loved each other unlawfully to marry?"