She saw the implication rather than the warning, and she burst out, angrily, that she wasn’t doing this for “pleasure”; she was doing it for principle! It was for the salvation of her soul!
“Athalia,” he said, solemnly, “the salvation of our souls depends on doing our duty.”
“Ah!” she broke in, triumphantly, “out of your own lips:—isn’t it my duty to do what seems to me right?”
He considered a minute. “Well, yes; I suppose the most valuable example any one can set is to do what he or she believes to be right. It may be wrong, but that is not the point. We must do what we conceive to be our duty. Only, we’ve got to be sure, Tay, in deciding upon duty, in deciding what is right,—we’ve got to be sure that self-interest is eliminated. I don’t believe anybody can decide absolutely on what is right without eliminating self.”
She frowned at this impatiently; its perfect fairness meant nothing to her.
“You promised to be my wife,” he went on with a curious sternness; “it is obviously ‘right,’ and so it is your first duty to keep your promise—at least, so long as my conduct does not absolve you from it.” Then he added, hastily, with careful justice: “Of course, I’m not talking about promises to love; they are nonsense. Nobody can promise to love. Promises to do our duty are all that count.”
That was the only reproach he made—if it was a reproach—for his betrayed love. It was just as well. Discussion on this subject between husbands and wives is always futile. Nothing was ever accomplished by it; and yet, in spite of the verdict of time and experience that nothing is gained, over and over the jealous man, and still more frequently the jealous woman, protests against a lost love with a bitterness that kills pity and turns remorse into antagonism. But Lewis Hall made no reproaches. Perhaps Athalia missed them; perhaps, under her spiritual passion, she was piqued that earthly passion was so readily silenced. But, if she was, she did not know it. She was entirely sincere and intensely happy in a new experience. It was a long winter of argument;—and then suddenly, in early April, the break came....
“I WILL go; I have a right to save my soul!”
And he said, very simply, “Well, Athalia, then I’ll go, too.”
“You? But you don’t believe—” And almost in the Bible words he answered her, “No; but where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live.” And then, a moment later, “I promised to cleave to you, little Tay.”