Her voice broke a little and flattened. 'Yes, you're right, what is the good of ideals one throws on the scrap heap? But I'll serve him, cherish him.... Though I can't love him with passion, if only he can love me again, I'll serve him honestly for better or for worse, till death....'
I suppose my instinctive mistrust of promises led me to point out that that parting was not likely to be remote unless—
'Unless?' she asked and repeated, 'I'll save him. I will save him.'
'You've got to save him from two dangers.'
'For heaven's sake don't speak in riddles,' she said, her nerves on edge.
'From himself and from the herd.'
'You think that even if he...' she hesitated, 'even if I can make him believe I'm worth his love, he'll still give himself up?'
I nodded, 'And his confession is on the D.C.'s desk.'
She seemed to brush this aside. 'Why can't he see it as I do?' she cried. 'A nightmare to be forgotten, if we can. Not to sacrifice to. He was mad at the time, mad with jealousy and fever. Why should his life be thrown after Dick's?'
It takes a woman to reach these heights of common sense. Conscience is the curse of Adam; while Eve's punishment, if I remember right, was nothing less practical than the pangs of child-birth and a dread of snakes.