“Talking of that and all I owe you for coming to me, you may be sure I shall pay the debt in a proper manner, Medora. I honour you far too much to treat you with anything but the greatest respect and delicacy, I hope; and I certainly would demean myself, or you, to live with you as a husband till we’re married. But let the world think as it pleases—which is mostly evil—we shall know what we really are, and we’ll always be—a self-respecting, high-minded pair. It’s easy enough to be better than the world thinks you, because it judges others by itself and the mass of people have a very base standard. The law itself is disgusting and bestial in this matter. It sticks to the old, shameful conditions and demands adultery before divorce. So there must be evidence of that—we’re ordered to sink to furnishing evidence of it; but we’re made of much too fine stuff to sink to the heathen reality. We’re a cut above the dirty law—you and me. We want to live our future lives on a plane of mutual respect and admiration. We don’t mean all the future to be spoiled by the memory of human weakness.”
He made no other allusion to the previous night and Medora’s wonderful eyes bent upon him with apparent adoration, while her wonderful heart grew a little hard. She remembered that she had been married and he never had.
“You’re a saint,” she said.
“Oh, no—only a clean-minded, honourable man, Medora.”
She fell asleep gently hating him that night; but after many hours of dreamless slumber, she awoke in better spirits and found herself loving Kellock again. He was a hero and somewhat abnormal, as heroes must be; but, after all, she was a heroine, and should therefore find no supreme difficulty in rising to the heights on which he moved. She saw indeed that this would be necessary if she wished to be happy.
She met him radiantly next morning and he found her mood easy and humble. He knew a man at Doulton’s Pottery, and when he suggested going to see the famous works, she agreed.
“We shall be among our own sort there,” he said. “It will be good for us. I don’t think sitting in Hyde Park watching the rich was good for us. I may have said a bit more than I meant about them. They’re not all worthless wasters, of course, and it’s quite true what you said, that there may be a bit of class prejudice in me.”
“No, there isn’t—not a scrap,” she answered. “And if there is, they deserve it. Nobody looks all round things like you do. You’ll live to see it all altered no doubt, and do your bit to help alter it.”
“If I had my way, them that don’t work shouldn’t eat,” he declared. “Work’s the saving of mankind, and you can’t be healthy-minded if you sit and look on at life, any more than you can be healthy-bodied if you take no exercise. We all owe a lot to every one else, and them that won’t pay that debt and want to take all and give nought, are wicked enemies to the State.”
At Doulton’s Medora was genuinely interested, and best she liked the painting rooms.