“Work—yes. But not to lie, not to cheat, not to exchange self-respect for self-contempt—at least, I think, I hope not.”
“But why should that be necessary?”
“It may not be if I am free—free to meet every situation as it arises, with no responsibility for others resting upon me in the decision. If I had a wife, how could I be free? I might be forced to sell myself—not for fame but for a bare living. Suppose choice between freedom with poverty and comfort with self-contempt were put squarely at me, and I a married man. She would decide, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, and if she were the right sort of a woman, decide instantly for self-respect.”
“Of course—if I asked her. But do you imagine that when a man loves a woman he lets her know?”
“It would be a crime not to let her know.”
“It would be a greater crime to put her to the test—if she were a woman brought up, say, as you have been.”
“How can you say that? How can you so overestimate the value of mere incidentals?”
“How can I? Because I have known poverty—have known what it was to look want in the face. Because I have seen women, brought up as you have been, crawling miserably about in the sloughs of poverty. Because I have seen the weaknesses of human nature and know that they exist in me—yes, and in you, for all your standing there so strong and arrogant and self-reliant. It is easy to talk of misery when one does not understand it. It is easy to be the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a sordid and squalid martyrdom the woman one loves—well, the man does not live who would do it, if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen. No, love is a luxury of the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It is not for my kind, not for me.”
They were pausing at Mrs. Carnarvon’s door.