"You thought it would make everything right if you married this man?"
"Right?" she repeated, surprised; "why, of course. At least I suppose that is what good people call right," she added dully.
"And you gave up doing right, to have David?"
She felt that she was trapped, and yet she could not understand why; "I sacrificed myself," she said confusedly.
"No," said Dr. Lavendar; "you sacrificed a conviction. A poor, false
conviction, but such as it was, you threw it over to keep David."
She looked at him in terror; "It was just selfishness, you think?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.
"Perhaps it was," she admitted. "Oh, how frightful life is! To try to be happy, is to be bad."
"No, to try to be happy at the expense of other people, is to be bad."
"But I never did that! Lloyd's wife was dead;—Of course, if she had been alive"—Helena lifted her head with the curious pride of caste in sin which is so strongly felt by the woman who is a sinner;—"if she had been alive, I wouldn't have thought of such a thing. But nobody knew, so I never did any harm,"—then she quailed; "at least, I never meant to do any harm. So you can't say it was at anybody's expense."