"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."
"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected that you were so narrow and conventional."
"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.
"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only the élite understand these things, and only the élite need know of them. You are of the élite yourself; you must know, you must feel the power, the privilege conferred by a great passion."
"Pray do not class me with the élite if passion is what they respect," Beth said. "Passion at the best—honourable passion—is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The passion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure to decay."
"Passion is more than that, the passion of which I speak. It is a great mental stimulant," he declared.
"Yes," said Beth, "passion is a great mental stimulant—passion resisted."
"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she only wrote her best under the influence of a strong passion," he assured her.
"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot's serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of passion and the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but passion, which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient servant willing to work. I would rather die of passion myself, as I might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."
Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had come primed with the old platitudes, the old sophistries, the old flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed resistance, his flatteries and platitudes ridiculed, his sophistries exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of those who are sure of themselves.