“I was younger then, it is not the same; I am getting old. How many years older am I than you—seven, I think? You are three-and-twenty, I am thirty. How time flies!”
“Yes, I am three-and-twenty—you don't look thirty.”
“I feel it, though; few fellows have had so much trouble as I have. Your life has been all pleasure.”
“If a man really loves a woman he is always right to marry her. Why should we suppose that a woman may not reform—that true love may not raise her? I was talking to a novelist the other day; he told me thestory of a book he is writing. It is about a woman who leaves the husband she has never loved for the man she adores; she goes away with him, he marries her, and she sinks lower and lower, until she becomes a common prostitute.”
“You are quite mistaken. I am sure that when you see the missis—”
“My dear fellow, pray do not misunderstand me. I would not for worlds. I am only telling you about a book, if you will only listen. I told him that I thought the story would be ten times as interesting if, instead of being degraded, the woman were raised by the love of the man who took her away from her husband. He made the husband a snivelling little creature, and the lover good-looking—that's the old game. I would have made the lover insignificant and the husband good-looking. Nevertheless she loved the lover better. I know of nothing more noble than for a man to marry the woman he loves, and to raise her by the force of his love; he could teach her, instruct her. Nellie will never forget me. I gave her a religion, I taught her and explained to her the whole of the Catholic faith—”
“I hope you won't try to convert my sisters.”
“You do pull me up so! Don't you understand that I was very young then? I was only twenty, not much more; besides, I was engaged to Nellie.”
“Come back to what we were talking about.”
“Well, I have said that if you love her I believe you are quite right to marry her. But do you love her?”