“Oh, I’m changed there.”
“Are you sure? Are you not deceived by this sudden and maybe momentary streak of good luck in your affairs? You have fixed your ambition high—very high. You wish to make an honest and a useful and a distinguished career. You know you have weaknesses. I needn’t remind you—need I—that you have had to fight those weaknesses? How could you have won thus far if you had been responsible for others instead of being alone, and certain that the consequences would fall upon yourself only? I want to see you continue to win. I don’t want to see you dragged down by extravagance, by love for this woman, by ambition of the kind her friends approve. I don’t want to see you—You were silent when Stokely insulted you!”
“Love—such love as mine—and for such a woman—and with such love in return—drag down? Impossible!”
“Not so—not exactly so, though I must say you are plausible. But don’t forget that you and she are not starting out to make a career. Don’t forget that she is already fixed—her tastes, habits, friendships, associations, ideals already formed. Don’t forget that your love is the only bond between you—and that it may drag you toward her mode of life instead of drawing her towards yours. Don’t forget that your own associations and temptations are becoming more and more difficult. I repeat, you cringed—yes, cringed—when Stokely insulted you. Why?”
Howard was silent.
“And,” the Visitor went on relentlessly, “let me remind you that not only did you give her up without a struggle a few months ago but also she gave you up without a word.”
“But what could she have said?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I’m not familiar with ways feminine. But I know—we know—that, if there had not been some reservation in her love, some hesitation about you—unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to make her yield—she would not have let you go as she did.”
“But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us.”
“Perhaps—that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you really so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you stimulated by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come? What then?”