"I did not imagine that bracelet," Beth replied.
"Well, even if I did give her the bracelet," he said, "you're not going to be nasty-minded enough to insinuate that there was anything in that!"
"There was deceit in it," Beth answered, "and in your whole attitude towards that girl while she was under this roof. If we act so that we cannot be open and honest about our dealings with people, then there must be something wrong. Life would be intolerable if it had to be lived among people any one of whom, while professing friendship for us, was deceiving us in some vital particular. From the moment that we act on our own inclinations rather than up to what the noblest of our friends expect of us, we have gone wrong. But you and I are both young enough, Dan, to put the past behind us, and forget it. Let us start together afresh in another place, where there will be no evil associations, nothing to vex us by reminding us of unhappy days; and let us be loyal to each other, and honest and open in every act, making due allowance for each other, and doing our best to help and please each other. We shall be happy, I am sure. You will see we shall be very happy."
Dan took his cigar out of his mouth, and flicked the ash from the end of it with his little finger: "You'd have me give up my appointment here, I suppose, and the half of my income with it?"
"Most of all I would have you give up your appointment here," she answered earnestly. "No honest woman can endure to have her husband pandering to vice. It would not be so much of a sacrifice either," she added, "for the next session will end this iniquity."
"Thanks to the influence of you cursed women," he exclaimed.
"Thanks to our influence, yes," she answered dispassionately, "and to some sense of justice in men."
"If you knew how men talk about women who meddle in these matters," he said, "you would keep out of them, I think."
"Oh, I know the kind of thing they say," she answered, smiling; "but the people you mean have no influence nowadays. The blatant protest of the debauched against our demand for a higher standard of life is not the voice of the community. It is the cry of those who feel their existence threatened, who only live upon lies, and must be extinguished when the inevitable day of reckoning comes which shall expose them. Even now the kind of man who catches at every straw of opinion which shall secure to him his sacred carnal rights, at no matter what cost of degradation and disease to women, is out of date, and we pay no attention to him."
"Oh, women!" Dan jeered. "That is all very fine! But who the devil cares what women think?"