"But you do love him, that man!"
Now at last she turned to him, gazing straight through the mist of her tears.
"Sam, if you really loved me, would you ask that? Wouldn't you just try to be so gentle and good that there'd no longer be any place in my heart for any other sort of love, so I'd learn to think that our love was the only sort in the world? Wouldn't you take your chance and make good on it, believing that it must be in nature that a woman can love more than one man, or love men in more than one way? Isn't marriage broader and with more chance for both? If you love me and not just yourself alone, can't you take your chance as I am taking mine? And after all, doesn't a woman give the odds? If you do love, me--"
[pg 218]
"If I do, then my business is to try to make you forget Will Banion."
"There is no other way you could. He may die. I promise you I'll never see him after I'm married.
"And I'll promise you another thing"--her strained nerves now were speaking truth for her--"if by any means I ever learn--if I ever believe--that Major Banion is not what I now think him, I'll go on my knees to him. I'll know marriage was wrong and love was right all the time."
"Fine, my dear! Much happiness! But unfortunately for Major Banion's passing romance, the official records of a military court-martial and a dishonorable discharge from the Army are facts which none of us can doubt or deny."
"Yes, that's how it is. So that's why."