"Ah, dear friend, if it were but possible!" she murmured, holding his hands tightly.
"But it is possible," he insisted. "All that we need is courage. You owe nothing to your husband. You can leave him without remorse or a moment's shame. Your life just now is wasted,—a precious human life. I want you, Josephine. God knows how I want you!"
"You have my friendship—even my love. There, I have said it!" she repeated, with a little sob, "my love."
His arms were suddenly around her. She shrank back in her chair. Her terrified eyes invited and yet reproached him.
"Remember—oh, please remember!" she cried.
"What can I remember except one thing?" he whispered.
She held him away from her.
"You talk as though everything were possible between us. How can that be? I have no joy in my husband, nor he in me—but I am married. We are not in America."
He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb. He stood before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind the shelter of reasonable words.
"Let me tell you," he began, "why our divorce laws are so different from yours. We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and besmirching thereby her life with evil. We believe, on the other hand, that there is no sin in love."