“Yes,” he said; “I am afraid that is it.”
“Good God!” Styr stood up, her face expressing a horror that lashed his own brain. “That means ruin, no career—being a social outcast—for several valuable years, at all events. No opportunity to marry a decent girl of fortune. Nothing! And you—all the delightful freshness of your young good looks faded, your enjoyment of life dulled, embittered,—your splendid pride broken. Oh, you cannot, you do not contemplate such a step!”
“No, I don’t,” he said intensely, although he did not raise his voice to the tragic pitch of hers. “But she does. That is the whole point. Her husband may accuse her at any moment. I think that is what she wants. Then she will confess. He will cast her out. I must go with her. Whatever she may be, there will be no altering the fact that she will have courted ruin for my sake, and I cannot desert her. I have been a fool. I must pay the price. How could I act otherwise?”
He looked so obstinate that Margarethe could have shaken him, but she was aghast. It was far worse than she had supposed. She was the more determined to save him—but how? She longed to be alone, to set her wits to work.
“Suppose you were to be convinced that she had had many other lovers—which, no doubt, is the case?”
“What difference would that make?”
“Well, none, I suppose, with a psychological young modern like yourself! But you are too good to throw away. This must not happen. Cannot you keep her quiet by renewed devotion and let her down by degrees?”
“I am afraid I haven’t the self-command. I almost hate her—except when she appeals to my sympathies, and then I almost love her.”
“If you were ten years older you would manage it all so well! But, to be sure, if you were ten years older you would not be in this predicament, for more reasons than one. I suppose that you have never in your life done anything you did not want to do, nor failed to gratify every desire?”
“When possible,” he said ingenuously. “But I have to do many things I don’t like.”