“I must talk it over with someone,” he burst out at length. “I’m so utterly alone, and I have no one to help or advise me. . . . I’m marrying Jenny because I must I’ve known her for some time—the whole thing was sordid and hateful—and yesterday after I left you she came to my rooms. She was half hysterical, poor thing, she hardly knew what she was saying, and she told me . . . .”
“What you very well might have foreseen,” interrupted Miss Ley.
“Yes.”
Miss Ley meditated, slowly drawing her initials with the point of her parasol in the gravel, and Basil stared at her anxiously.
“Are you sure you’re not making a fool of yourself!” she asked finally. “You’re not in love with her, are you?”
“No.”
“Then you have no right to marry her. Oh, my dear boy, you don’t know how tiresome marriage is sometimes, even with persons of the same class and inclinations. I’ve known so many people in my life, and I’m convinced that marriage is the most terrible thing in the world unless passion makes it absolutely inevitable. And I hate and abhor with all my soul those fools who strive to discredit and ignore that.”
“If I don’t marry Jenny she’ll kill herself. She’s not like an ordinary barmaid. Until I knew her she was perfectly straight. It means absolute ruin to her.”
“I think you exaggerate. After all, it’s not much more than a very regrettable incident due to your—innocence; and there’s no need for desperate courses or histrionics. You will behave lite a gentleman, and take proper care of the girl. She can go into the country till the whole thing is over, and when she comes back no one will be the wiser nor she very much the worse.”
“But it isn’t a matter of people knowing; it’s a matter of honour.”