"I don't know whether it occurs to you," remarked Beatrice, with her head on one side; "but it is a very dangerous doctrine that you and Mr. Dalrymple seem to believe in. Logically worked out, it leads--goodness knows where it _doesn't_ lead to." The blood flew over the girl's pale face. She was the most sensitively delicate, the most maidenly, of girls; and she scented a meaning in her cousin's words that shocked her terribly. "I am sure that cannot be," she said, with a majestic gentleness that was full of severe reproach. "You don't imply that husbands and wives, when they are tired of each other--or even when only one is tired--are at liberty to make fresh combinations?" "You _know_ I am not alluding to married people, Beatrice. They are like nuns who have taken the veil; they have nothing to do with--with--such things as we have been speaking of." "Oh, indeed--haven't they?" "They are in a sacred place. They are out of the common world--out of the arena, so to speak. They have taken their prizes, and gone to sit with the spectators. Even if they do marry wrongly, and do not love each other afterwards, in the fullest way, after such a dedication as they have made--with such ties and confidences, and intimacies between them, so sacred, and so close, and so delicate, and so--so--oh, Beatrice, don't look at me like that! You know what I mean." "I am trying to follow you, dear." "You are married yourself, and you know how it is--better than I do. Yet _I_ know, too. If I were married--if I were Roden's wife----" "You would lie down at his feet and let him clean his boots on you, if there did not happen to be a door-mat handy--oh, yes, I quite understand _that_." "I would never make demands upon him that he should love me always," the girl proceeded, with a gentle solemnity that this kind of flippant witticism could not discompose. "I would never even ask him if he loved me. It would seem to me a coarse and insulting question, and it would tempt him to doubt whether he did. If he went away from me, I would never say to him, 'Write to me often--write me long letters.' It is so stupid of people to do that! Of course, if he wanted to, he would; and if he did it because he was asked, his letters would be valueless, and worse. He should never have to think of me as a mortgage on his life and his happiness--he should do as he liked--he should love me as he liked. And if ever he left off loving me, I should know he could not help it--I should not blame him--I should not ask him why. I should _feel_ it in a moment--I am sure, long before he did--as one feels a chill in the air when the sun goes in, even if one's eyes are shut; but I should never say a word about it. And yet----" "And yet it would never occur to him, you think, to provide himself with a more congenial companion?" "Beatrice, I cannot talk to you, if you make those suggestions."