Griggs was silent for a moment. He had never heard a woman state the case so plainly and forcibly, and he was struck by what she said. He could have answered her quickly enough. But the answer would not have been satisfactory to himself.
"You see, you have nothing to say," she said. "But in one way you are right. We cannot argue this question. I did not ask you to come in order to discuss it. I sent for you to beg you to do what is right, as far as you can. And you could do much."
"What should you think right?" asked Griggs, curious to know what she thought.
"You should take Gloria to her father, as you are his friend. Since she has left her husband, she should live with her father."
"That is a very simple idea!" exclaimed the young man, with something almost like a laugh.
"Right is always simple," answered Francesca, quietly. "There is never any doubt about it."
She looked at him once, and then continued to work at her embroidery. His eyes rested on the pure outline of her maidenlike face, and he was silent for a moment. Somehow, he felt that her simplicity of goodness rebuked the simplicity of his sin.
"You forget one thing," said Griggs at last. "You make a spiritual engine of mankind, and you forget the mainspring of the world. You leave love out of the question."
"Perhaps—as you understand love. But you will not pretend to tell me that love is necessarily right, whatever it involves."
"Yes," answered the young man. "That is what I mean. Unless your God is a malignant and maleficent demon, the overwhelming passions which take hold of men, and against which no man can fight beyond a certain point, are right, because they exist and are irresistible. As for what you propose that I should do, I cannot do it."