“I envy you. I don't even know what you mean by duty. It seems to me another name for the tyranny of false sentiment.”
“Don't disturb my ideas,” she exclaimed, with an appealing gesture. “Don't say these things. They make me wretched. I can't afford to doubt and question. One must have a few permanent rules of conduct.”
“But if they are fantastic, capricious, insincere?”
“I can't argue. I am not clever. I will not change my views. I dare not. It would make me hate you.”
“You are the slave of convention.”
“That may be. That is safer, after all, than being the slave of some other will stronger than my own. Why do you try to disturb my life—now—after so many really happy months of friendship?”
“Were they so happy? Agnes, were they happy?”
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said, at last; “relatively, yes.”
“It is quite true. Good women drive us to the bad ones.”