"I want him to be good," said her mother.
"I can't be happy, Edith," Maurice told her; "don't you see?"
She looked straight in his eyes, her own eyes terror-stricken. ... They would drive him away from her! "You shall be happy," she said.
They saw only each other, now.
"No," Maurice said; "it's just as your father says; I have no right to drag any girl into the kind of life I've got to live. I'll have to see Lily a good deal, so as to keep in with her—and be able to look after Jacky. Personal happiness is all over for me."
She caught at his arm; "It isn't! Maurice, don't listen to them!" Then she turned and stood in front of him, as though to put her young breast between him and that tender, menacing parental love. "Oh, mother—oh, father! I do love you; I don't want to do anything you don't approve of;—but Maurice comes first. If he asks me to marry him, I will."
Under his breath Maurice said, "Edith!"
"My darling," Henry Houghton said, "consider: people are bound to know all about this. The publicity will be a very painful embarrassment—"
Edith broke in, "As if that matters!"
"But the serious thing," her father went on, "Is that this woman will be a millstone around his neck—"