"Surely you're not going to take it seriously, Uncle Mark?"
"Most seriously; and so do you, though you pretend to laugh—as if I didn't know every note in your laughter, like every note in a ring of bells. It is serious. You cannot defy simple, wholesome usage and custom for ever."
"But who has a right to speak while Myles is silent? If I hurt him, he would tell me. He is quite himself again."
"Shows how little you know him, for all your love of him. You are hurting him, and my ear tells me more than all your senses can tell you. He lives in a dreary hell and speaks out of it. I can almost see his face when I hear his voice."
"I'm always thinking of him."
"Yes, with a moiety of your thoughts. It isn't allowed one woman to make two men wholly happy—else you might succeed. But you're only following the old, stale road and making two men wholly miserable. Any fool in a petticoat can manage as much. That's the foundation your present content is built upon. There's awful wickedness in it, to my mind; and double-distilled sin coming from such as you, because you're not a fool at all, but have sense enough to profit by experience. You must be aware that Myles is a wretched man; and, though you may not think it, Yeoland knows very well he's living in a wrong atmosphere—a mere shadow of happiness. Better far you make one happy, out-and-out, than keep each miserable. One has got to smart, and the sooner you decide which, the better for both."
"That you should ever speak so!"
"You've fallen away much of late—in mind and conduct I mean. Your fine, sharp instincts are grown blunter. You can live this mean, half-and-half life; and you don't understand, or you won't. There's no passion in it, I do think, and I suppose you can go on being fond of two men without disgracing Endicott breed; but I'll speak plainly, since it's vital I should. Men are different. They're not built to go on mooning with a talking doll for ever. Even Christopher Yeoland is made of flesh and blood. A woman may be all mind; a man never is. Now, what are you, and what are you doing? You're a married woman, and you're ruining the life of about the worthiest man I've been happy to meet since my own brother—your dear father—died. End it—if Yeoland hasn't got strength and determination sufficient to do so. Tell him your mind; be true to your husband, and bid the man go—if he is a man."
Honor Stapledon listened to this grave rebuke with a heaving breast.
"You call that justice! You would ask him, after all he has suffered and endured, to go away from his own? You would coldly bid him turn his back on all that makes life worth living for him—Godleigh?"