“Isn’t it rather late in the day to talk of morality? I don’t see where precisely the honour came in when you seduced her.”
“I dare say I’ve been an utter cad,” he answered humbly; “but I see a plain duty before me, and I must do it.”
“You talk as though such things had never happened before,” pursued Miss Ley.
“Oh yes, I know they happen every day. If the girl gives way, so much the worse for her; it’s no business of the man’s. Let her go on the streets, let her go to the devil, and be hanged to her.”
Miss Ley, pursing her lips, shrugged her shoulders. She wondered how he proposed to live, since his income was quite insufficient for the necessities of a family, and he was peculiarly unsuited to the long drudgery of the Bar. She knew the profession termed “literary” well enough to be aware that in it little money could be earned. Basil lacked the journalistic quickness, and it took him two years to write a novel for which he would probably not get more than fifty pounds; and his passion for the analysis of mental states offered small chance of lucrative success. Besides, he was extravagant, and would hate to pinch and spare: nor had he occasion ever to learn the difficult art of getting a shilling’s-worth of goods for twelve coppers.
“I suppose you’ve realized that people will cut your wife,” Miss Ley added.
“Then they will cut me too.”
“But you’re the last man in the world to give up these things. There’s nothing you enjoy more than dinner-parties and visits to country houses. Women’s smiles are all important to you.”
“You talk of me as if I were a tame cat,” he returned, smiling. “After all, I’m only trying to do my duty. I made an awful mistake, and heaven knows how bitterly I’ve regretted it. But now I see the way clearly before me, and whatever the cost, I must take it.”
Miss Ley looked at him sharply, and her keen gray eyes travelled over his face in a minute examination.