"Why not?"
"I don't know," replied Paul; "but you don't. If you did—well, it would be wrong somehow. I can't explain it, but it feels to me something like—well, what I think a Roman Catholic would feel if he found someone trying to caricature the Virgin Mary." His voice was so earnest and sincere that she could not be offended.
"I am not like all these men here," went on Paul. "I was brought up among the working-classes, and I have, in spite of everything, idealised women. I expect it is because I love my mother. And when I see a girl drinking liqueurs, smoking cigarettes, and doing things like that, I feel that somehow my ideal is, well, besmirched somehow. I believe less in the modesty of women, and I think it's a bad thing for any man to lower his ideals concerning women! Yes, I am so glad it wasn't you!"
"Still I don't understand why."
"Because you are the most sacred thing in my life!" he answered. "I have tried to tell you that before now, only somehow I haven't been able. You are the most wonderful thing in the world to me, and you hate these things too, don't you?"
"Why should you think so? There are many better girls than I who smoke and drink liqueurs."
"No," said Paul. "No. Do you know that, although I have hated you, you've been the one dream of my life, and that you've made everything possible to me? You're angry with me, aren't you?"
"No," she replied, "not angry. But still, you must not speak to me like that!"
"I cannot help it," he replied. "Do you know that but for you I should not have been a Member of Parliament now?"
"But for me?"