“Duty? Oh, David!” Her heart forboded the impossible demand upon it.
Gillespie set his bucket of milk down beside the spring. “Nancy,” he said, “a woman cannot have two husbands. It's a crime against the State. It's a sin against God.”
“But I haven't got two husbands! What do you mean, David? Didn't I believe he was dead? Didn't you? Oh, David, what—Do you think I've done wrong? You let me do it!”
“I don't think you've done wrong; but look out you don't do it. You are doing it, now. I can't let you do it. I can't let you live in sin!”
“In sin? Me?”
“You. Every minute you live now with Laban you live in sin. Your first husband, that was dead, is alive. He can't claim you unless you allow it; but neither can your second husband, now. If you live on with Laban a day longer—an hour—a minute—you live in deadly sin. I thought of it all night but I had not thought it out till this minute when I first saw you sitting there and I knew how miserable you were, and my heart seemed to bleed at the sight of you.”
“You may well say that, David,” the woman answered with a certain pride in the vastness of her calamity. “If it was another woman I couldn't bear to think of it. Why does He do it? Why does He set such traps for us?”
“Nancy!” her brother called sternly.
“Oh, yes, it's easy enough for you! But if Rachel was here, she'd see it different.”
“Woman!” her brother said, “don't try to hide behind the dead in your sin.”