"Justine, you are a fool."
"Madame, there is no commandment against being a fool."
"Oh, you make me angry with your meekness!" Here Mrs. Falchion caught a twig from a tree by her, snapped it in her fingers, and petulantly threw its pieces to the ground. "Suppose that the man had once loved you, and afterwards loved another—then again another?"
"Madame, that would be my great misfortune, but it might be no wrong in him."
"How not a wrong in him?"
"It may have been my fault. There must be love in both—great love, for it to last."
"And if the woman loved him not at all?"
"Where, then, could be the wrong in him?"
"And if he went from you,"—here her voice grew dry and her words were sharp,—"and took a woman from the depths of—oh, no matter what! and made her commit—crime—and was himself a criminal?"
"It is horrible to think of; but I should ask myself how much I was to blame. . . . What would you ask yourself, madame?"