"And would that be forgiveness?" Helen turned to him again energetically.
"It would be wisdom, at all events."
"Ah, now you come back to your argument!" Her voice changed. "You are pressing me to do what is wise, not what is right. Don't do that! Please don't do that!"
"Do you forgive him?" asked the colonel, very gravely.
Again she paused before answering him.
"Why should you doubt it?" she asked in her turn. "Don't you see that I wish to go back to him?"
"You know what I mean. It is not the same thing. You are a very good woman, and by sheer force of goodness you could make an enormous sacrifice for the sake of what you thought right."
"And would not that be forgiveness?"
"No. If you freely forgave him, it would be no sacrifice, for you would believe in him again. You would have just the same faith in Harmon which you had on the day you married him. If forgiveness means anything, it means that one takes back the man who has hurt one, on the same real, inward terms with oneself on which one formerly lived with him. You cannot do that, for it would not be sane."
"No, I cannot quite do that," Helen answered, after a moment's thought. "It would not be true to say that I had even thought I could. But then, if you put it in that way, it would be hard to forgive any one, and it would generally be foolish. There is something wrong about your way of looking at it."