Evan changed his tone. "Well, never mind the right and the wrong of it," he said earnestly. "Do it because I love you. I love you with all my heart. We quarrel, but my heart speaks to yours. You must hear it. I have endured from you what I believe no man ever forgave a woman. But I forgive you. If you go to jail my life will be a desert. But go to jail you shall, unless you make restitution!"
Corinna laughed mirthlessly. "Funny kind of love!" she said.
"It is the best kind of love. I have sense enough left to realise that if I give in to you on a clear question of right it would ruin us both. We would despise each other."
"I have promised to trouble the Deaves no further," she said. "They're satisfied."
"The bonds must go back."
"I had already decided to break up the Avengers, too. Isn't that enough?"
He shook his head.
She turned away. "You ask the impossible," she said. "I'd rather die!"
"But to go to jail," he said relentlessly, "to have your beautiful hair cut off" (he was not at all sure of this, but he supposed she was not either), "to wear the hideous prison dress, to have the sickly prison pallor in your clear cheeks, and your eyes dimmed. Your best years, Corinna!"
This went home. She paled; her breath came unevenly. "You say you love me," she murmured, "and you'd hand me over to that."