“Oh, no. But I see that she would have had you, and therefore you were foolish not to have her.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s too late now, and I shall have to put up with the consequences of my folly,” said he, pressing her tenderly to him.
“That’s just what I thought,” she agreed quite plaintively. “Miss Glass says a good wife must cook, Ella says a good wife must read, but nobody says a good wife must just sing and laugh and amuse herself as I do. And so when you’re tired of kissing me, you will feel you had better not have married me, but only have amused yourself like Dicky Wood—” She paused significantly.
“Dicky Wood!” echoed he sharply.
“—With Chloris White.”
George moved uneasily; he was angry and disturbed.
“You must not say such things—you must not think them. The name of such a woman as that is not fit to pass your lips.”
“But, George,” she argued, looking straight into his eyes with penetrating shrewdness, “if you had not been you, say, if you had been Rahas or Captain Pascoe, I might—”
He stopped the words upon her lips with a great gravity which awed her and kept her very still, very attentive, while he spoke.
“When God throws an innocent girl into the arms of an honest man, Nouna, as you came into mine, she is a sacred gift, received with such reverent love that she must always hold herself holy and pure, and never even let any thought of evil come into her heart, so that she may be the blessing God intended. I was born into the world to protect you and shield you from harm, my darling; and so my love was ready for you at the moment when your innocence might have put you in danger, just as it will be to the end of your life.”