“But think how infamous! how base such an act! how scandalous! I cannot do it!”
“Yet, you will do worse—far worse. A loveless marriage is worse than a broken vow. Such a marriage may pass current for legal tender in the courts of the world, but when some day, you come to square up accounts, you will find fraudulent bonds and unholy speculation in married estate the worst investment a foolish woman ever made. Dishonesty never pays, but it pays less in a marriage without love than anywhere else. And where’s the use of trying to deceive Rube and the rest of the world, when God knows? You can’t very well hoodwink Him, Mell. And how will you be able to endure it; to be clothed in marvellously fine garments and ride in a chariot, and envy the beggars as you pass them in their honest rags; to be a Jonas in every kiss, a Machiavelli in every word, a crocodile in every tear; Janus-faced on one side, and mealy-mouthed on the other; to be a fraud, a sham, a make-believe, an organized humbug, and a painted sepulchre? That’s the picture of the woman who marries one man and loves another. Is it a pleasant picture, Mell? You will chafe behind the gilded bars, and champ the jewelled bit. You will feel the sickening thraldom of a cankering memory, a rankling regret, a sullen remorse, a longing after your true self, with every breath a lie, every act a counterfeit, every word a mincing of the truth. God only knows how you will bear it!”
God only—she did not. Her head drooped lower in unspeakable bitterness and humiliation. Amid all the darkness she could see but one ray of light.
“But if I do my duty—” began Mell.
“A woman’s first duty to her husband is to love him,” said Jerome, gravely; “failing in that, she fails in all else.”
“But love comes with the doing of duty, everybody says. I must do my duty by Rube.”
“Very well. Do your duty, Mell, but do it now. That is all I ask. Manifestly it is not your duty to marry him. With every throb of your heart pulsating for me, you will not be worth one dollar to Rube in the capacity of a wife. He would tell you so, if he knew. Can’t you see that, Mell?”
She could see it distinctly. Jerome’s words burned with the brilliancy of magnesium, throwing out this aspect of the subject in glaring light. Rube stood again before her, as he had stood on the morning of that day upon which she had undertaken to fulfil her promise to Jerome and failed so ignominiously—stood, and was saying: “I would be the most defrauded man of the two,” and “where would be the sanctity of such a marriage?”
Not one dollar would she be worth to him—if he knew! He would know some time; everything under the sun gets known somehow, the only question is—when?
Seeing the impression made, Jerome spoke again, in words low, impassioned: