"Does wrong become right by multiplication?" said Dora, who was not sorry to see the turn that the conversation had taken, a turn which would give her the opportunity of making a little sermon that should cool down the ardour of the General. "I shall never be able to understand why the men who belong to what is called Society should not be expected to conduct themselves as honourably as those of the modest middle classes. It is from above that example should come, and, believe me, it will have to come from above, or society will disappear for want of having fulfilled its mission."
"Well, well, you may be right," said Sabaroff; "but listen to my story. For months, for years, I could not bear to think of all that I had lost in losing you. Was it any wonder that I went half mad and ran into all kind of excesses? The light of your pure eyes was turned away from me. I tossed about like a rudderless ship, and only my ambition saved me from wreckage of body and soul."
"Does it not seem to you a little cowardly," said Dora, glad to recover the thread of her little sermon, "for a man to lay the blame for such a life at a woman's door, because he would not exercise the self-control that thousands of women have to exercise almost all their lives? Do you think it is only men who feel? Ah, believe me, there are few women who have not had, at some period of their lives, to suffer and be silent, to hold a bursting heart, and go about the daily task, with its cruel, half-mechanical routine, which leaves the mind free to dwell on all the misery that stirring scenes might help it to forget. Those who give way to their despair, society mocks at; those who abandon themselves to their passions, society puts outside the pale."
Dora began to feel that she was putting too much heat into her reply. With an attempt at a tone of indifference, she went on—
"But tell me more about that saving grace of ambition, General. It has made you a great and powerful man."
"Great, no; powerful, yes," replied Sabaroff, and he laid an insinuating stress on the word yes, which did not escape Dora's notice. "But, of all the satisfaction which my present position of confidence with my imperial master has brought me, nothing is so sweet as the power of doing what I am going to do for you."
"I am so proud you approve of the shell—then you will have it taken up by the Russian Government?
"Yes," said Sabaroff, "I have the paper here ready to sign, and am only waiting for a telegram from St. Petersburg, which I have ordered to be brought to me here if it should happen to arrive before ten o'clock" ...
"My husband will be so glad!"
"Ah, 'my husband will be glad,'" repeated Sabaroff, in a half-mocking tone; "Mrs. Grantham, will you be glad?—Dora," said he, warming as he proceeded, "do you not realise that what I am going to do is for your sake, and not for the man who has won the only woman I ever loved?"