"I was looking at the thing from a lawyer's view-point. And may I point out that the affair appears not to have come to an end. What I am trying to make clear is this: that, if you had wished it to come to an end, you should, before you left East Gilead, have arranged somehow that this Miss Stubbs broke off the engagement."
"Understanding."
"The engagement or understanding. That would have cleaned the slate. You should have done something that would have made her disgusted with you."
"How could I? I'm not the sort of fellow who can do things like that."
"Even now, it seems to me, if you could do something that would revolt this Miss Stubbs ... make her recoil from you with loathing...."
"Well, what?"
"I must think," said Hamilton Beamish.
He did four more laps.
"Suppose you had committed some sort of crime?" he said, returning to the fixed point. "Suppose she were to find out you were a thief? She wouldn't want to marry you if you were on your way to Sing-Sing."
"No. And neither would Molly."