“For me to take as my wife a woman who could not respect her?” Will questioned. “My mother’s memory for me is the sacredest of sacred things. You know something of her history. You know that she was in every sense but a legal sense my father’s wife. You know why they couldn’t be married legally. You know, too, how he treated her—and how she died. Do you suppose I could marry a woman who would always think of my mother as of one who had done something shameful?”
“Oh, but no woman with a spark of nobility in her soul would or could do that,” Johannah cried.
“Every woman brought up in the usual way, with the usual prejudices, the usual traditions, thinks evil of the woman who has had an illegitimate child,” asserted he.
“Not every woman. I, for instance. Do you imagine that I could think evil of your mother, Will?” She looked at him intensely, earnestly.
“Oh, you’re entirely different from other women. You’re——” But he stopped at that.
“Then—just for the sake of a case in point—if I were the woman you chanced to be in love with, and if I simultaneously chanced to be in love with you, you could see your way to marrying me?” she pursued him.
“What’s the use of discussing that?”
“For its metaphysical interest. Answer me.”
“There are other reasons why I couldn’t marry you.”
“I’m not good-looking enough?” she cried.