“But suppose you accidentally fell in love with a married man?”
“I can’t suppose it. I don’t believe people fall in love accidentally. They’re simply in love with love, and they have morbid, unhealthy tastes. Besides, married men are drearily unromantic. They always look so—so married.”
“Well, then, what do you think of a married man who falls in love with a girl?”
“Very poorly, indeed. And if he tells her of it, he ought to be pilloried.”
“You are becoming—conventional.”
“Not at all. But to fall in love honestly a man and a woman must both be free. If either has ties, each is bound from the other by them. And if it’s the man that is tied, there’s simply no excuse for him if he doesn’t heed the first sign of danger.”
“But it might be a terrible temptation to both of them. Love is very—very compelling, isn’t it?”
“There’s a great deal of nonsense talked about love, as you must know by this time. Of course, love is alluring, and when indulged in by sensible people, not to excess, it’s stimulating, like alcohol in moderation. But because cocaine could make me temporarily happier than anything else in the world, does that make it sensible for me to form the cocaine habit?”
Joan paused, then added with emphasis: “And there is a great deal that is called love that is no more love than the wolf was Little Red Ridinghood’s grandmother.”
Emily felt that Joan was talking obvious common sense and that she herself agreed with her entirely—so far as her reason was concerned. “But,” she thought, “the trouble is that reason doesn’t rule.” A few days later she went to dinner at Theresa’s. As she entered the dining-room the first person upon whom her eyes fell was a tall, slender girl, fair, handsome through health and high color, and with Stanhope’s peculiarly courageous yet gentle dark eyes— “It must be his sister.” She asked Theresa.