"My dear girl, who else? But there is such a thing as coercion."
"It was the prettiest, the most cordial letter. I read it."
"Then you think she knows nothing of that old affair?"
"Old?" She looks quickly at Neilson. "Do you think it is old—worn out, I mean?"
"No, I don't," says Neilson promptly. "And in my opinion, the sooner
Mrs. Bethune terminates her visit the better for everyone."
"What an unhappy marriage!" says Margaret, with a sigh. "All marriages are unhappy, I think."
"Not a bit of it. Most of the married people we know would not separate even were the power given them to do so."
"That is merely because they have grown necessary to each other."
"Well, what is love?" says Neilson, who is always defending his great cause against Margaret's attacks. "Was there ever a lover yet, who did not think the woman he loved necessary to him?"
"It is not the higher form of love," says Margaret, who still dreams of an ideal, born of her first attachment—an ideal that never in this practical world could have been realized, and if it could, would have been condemned at once as tiresome to the last degree.