Clara now recurred to these words of his as she sat looking at him through her tears across the breakfast table. “Was that the reason you never told me about poor Ben before?”
“Yes, and I expect you to justify me. What good would it have done to tell you?”
“I could have told you, at least, that, if Ben had any such feeling as that, it wasn't his fault altogether.”
“But you wouldn't have believed that, Clara,” said Atherton. “You know that, whatever that poor creature's faults are, coquetry isn't one of them.”
Clara only admitted the fact passively. “How did he excuse himself for coming back?” she asked.
“He didn't excuse himself; he defied himself. We had a stormy talk, and he ended by denying that he had any social duty in the matter.”
“And I think he was quite right!” Clara flashed out. “It was his own affair.”
“He said he had a concrete purpose, and wouldn't listen to abstractions. Yes, he talked like a woman. But you know he wasn't right, Clara, though you talk like a woman, too. There are a great many things that are not wrong except as they wrong others. I've no doubt that, as compared with the highest love her husband ever felt for her, Ben's passion was as light to darkness. But if he could only hope for its return through the perversion of her soul,—through teaching her to think of escape from her marriage by a divorce,—then it was a crime against her and against society.”
“Ben couldn't do such a thing!”
“No, he could only dream of doing it. When it came to the attempt, everything that was good in him revolted against it and conspired to make him help her in the efforts that would defeat his hopes if they succeeded. It was a ghastly ordeal, but it was sublime; and when the climax came,—that paper, which he had only to conceal for a few days or weeks,—he was equal to the demand upon him. But suppose a man of his pure training and traditions had yielded to temptation,—suppose he had so far depraved himself that he could have set about persuading her that she owed no allegiance to her husband, and might rightfully get a divorce and marry him,—what a ruinous blow it would have been to all who knew of it! It would have disheartened those who abhorred it, and encouraged those who wanted to profit by such an example. It doesn't matter much, socially, what undisciplined people like Bartley and Marcia Hubbard do; but if a man like Ben Halleck goes astray, it's calamitous; it 'confounds the human conscience,' as Victor Hugo says. All that careful nurture in the right since he could speak, all that life-long decency of thought and act, that noble ideal of unselfishness and responsibility to others, trampled under foot and spit upon,—it's horrible!”