Maurice looked at her with deep tenderness. "You are a satisfying person!" he said.
Henry Houghton took his girl's hand, and held it in a grip that hurt her. "Maurice is right," he said; "things are not going to be easy for him. For, though he won't marry Jacky's mother, he won't, I think, marry anybody else."
"Why won't he?" said Edith.
"There is no moral reason why he shouldn't," her father conceded; "it is a question of taste; one might perhaps call it a question of honor"—Maurice whitened, but Henry Houghton went on, calmly, "Maurice will, of necessity, be so involved with this woman—and God knows what annoyances she may make for him, that—it distresses me to say so—but I can see that he will not feel like asking any woman to share such a burden as he has to carry."
"If he loves any woman," Edith said, "let him ask her! If she turns him down, it stamps her for a coward!"
"Don't you think I'm right, Maurice?" her father said.
"Yes," Maurice said. "You are right. I've faced that."
Edith sprang to her feet, and stood looking at her father and mother, her eyes stern with protecting passion. "It seems to me absurd," she said,—"like standing up so straight you fall over backward!—for Maurice to feel he can't marry—somebody else, just because he—he did wrong, ever so many years ago! He's sorry, now. Aren't you sorry, Maurice?" she said.
His eyes stung;—the simplicity of the word was like a flower tossed into the black depths of his repentance! "Yes, dear," he said, gently; "I'm 'sorry.' But no amount of 'sorrow' can alter consequences, Edith."
"Oh," she said, turning to the other two, "don't you want Maurice ever to be happy?"