"I am only making your own suggestions, my dear. You said it was a degradation to love to keep it under lock and key." "And I said I was not speaking of married people. You _know_ there is something--whole worlds of things--besides love to be considered in their case." "Married people are just as human as single people--and so, for the matter of that, are nuns who have taken the veil, I suppose. Vows, if I understand you rightly, are immoral; and the dictates of nature should be obeyed. Nature is uncommonly likely to dictate to man who is not in love with his wife that there might possibly exist a more desirable woman." "I don't know how to explain myself," said Rachel, who felt herself in a distressing entanglement, and yet was conscious that her principles were being utterly misconstrued; "but I know that _that_--what you allude to--would be an impossibility." "Well, I daresay it would," said Mrs. Reade, after a pause. She was suddenly struck with the impropriety of insisting upon strict logic in the discussion of these delicate matters, all things considered. Yet she was not quite content to leave off at this point. "Put Mr. Dalrymple aside, Rachel. Suppose you were yourself married, not to him, but to someone you did not particularly care for?" "That could never be," the girl replied quickly. "Oh, I don't know. It was very nearly being, I may take leave to remind you. None of us can forsee what will happen, and 'never' is a ridiculous word for a child like you to use. You will not live an old maid for fifty or sixty years because you are disappointed in a lover whom you have known for a few days--don't you believe it." "I will make no vows," said Rachel with a faint smile; "but I express to you my sincere conviction that I shall never marry anybody. If I do--and I can't say I _wish_ to be an old maid--I shall tell the person, whoever he is, all about Roden, frankly." "Of course you will. And very probably he will like you the better for that frankness, and be quite willing to take you on your own terms. But then, suppose after years of married life Mr. Dalrymple turned up again, and you found you felt towards him as you do now--what then?" "What then?" repeated the girl, much disturbed and a little affronted; "I should not recognise that I felt so." "But suppose--for the sake of argument--that you could not help yourself?" "I hope I could help it, Beatrice. I should not allow him to remind me of the past." "Would not the past suggest itself sufficiently? Ah, my dear, he is a very strong man! And you are as weak as--well, we needn't say anything about that. If he wanted your love back, and you had it in your heart----" "If he did," interposed Rachel; "but I know he never would--I should love him no more." "Would that be in accordance with the terms of your philosophy?"