“My God—don't say that—it hurts me so, after—what you've done.”
“Jack,” she whispered sadly—“some day you'll know—some day you'll understand that there are things in life greater even than the selfishness of your own heart's happiness.”
“They can't be,” said Jack bitterly—“that's what all life's for—heart happiness—love. Why, hunger and love, them's the fust things; them's the man an' the woman; them's the law unto theyselves, the animal, the instinct, the beast that's in us; the things that makes God excuse all else we do to get them—we have to have 'em. He made us so; we have to have 'em—it's His own doin'.”
“But,” she said sweetly—“suppose it meant another to be despised, reviled, made infamous.”
“They'd have to be,” he said sternly, for he was thinking of Richard Travis—“they'd have to be, for he made his own life.”
“Oh, you do not understand,” she cried. “And you cannot now—but wait—wait, and it will be plain. Then you'll know all and—that I love you, Jack.”
He turned bitterly and walked away.