'But I tell you, you do not see the thing as it is. It would have been a criminal thing for a man doomed as I was, to link his life with a woman like you, frail, exquisite, young, beautiful, the very rose of the world. Is it permissible for a man to drag a woman with him to the scaffold, even for love? I leave it to any man.'
'Yes, to any man,'—her reply was quick on his,—'but you dare not leave it to a woman. Any man would tell you it is not permissible that one about to die should lay his hand in that of the woman he loves. And any man would grant you, that if the woman is his wife,—if that tradition has bound them,—then it is his right and her duty that they should share fatality, even though they have not the high calling of love. If this man who is my husband were stricken, you, even you, would expect me—'
The sentence broke and she left it as though there could be no need of making the truth plainer. Instead, she folded her hands tensely.
'But, oh, let us not argue. We have squandered God’s treasure, you and I. We have squandered it for the sake of convention, for old precedents, for men’s opinions; just as this man, my husband, buys railway shares and mining properties at the fearful price of his honor, his human kindness, his soul. You despise him and shrink from him. Truly, I cannot, except when he lays his hand upon me; for we are no better than he. That is the horrible part of it. We are all three spendthrifts, the three of us, here in this little space. But oh, what new folly! Only think of our spending these precious, precious moments in argument! Shall we never have done being wasteful!'
He fell in with her thought immediately.
'You love me still, then.'
'Yes, always.'
'Yet I have not the right, even now, to so much as touch your hand.'
'No; yet my hand lies in yours by the hour. These are things one cannot keep from God.'
'Do you know,'—his voice was even,—'I cannot help wondering if the little girl over there in the corner just might possibly understand.'