I could not answer.
"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your husband?"
"I thought so."
"And you came to think otherwise—"
"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my mother's husband—"
"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that—not here, where I found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer me."
"No."
"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
"No."
"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its truest sense? Tell me."