She covered her face with her hands.
“Can’t you see, Alfred? She needs you so! No one else can help. No one else can help her to grow into something better.”
“Please don’t cry!” he said, in great distress. “I’d do anything for you. You’re an angel!”
“I’m not! I’m not! I once—long ago—thought I’d leave my husband. But thank God I didn’t!”
“But it might have been better for you if you had,” he said, frankly.
She looked up in surprise.
“No!” she said. “It would have been—I am sure that self-sacrifice is the best way in life.”
“That depends on the object. If you sacrifice yourself for—well, humanity, it’s fine and good. But for one other human being, no!”
She had no intention of permitting an argument to begin. She pulled the conversation away from reason back to emotion, where it belonged.
“I don’t ask you to sacrifice yourself, Alfred. It would make you both happy.”