With a little impatient gesture, “Oh, give me an instance, it will keep me from imagining things.” She stopped by a rustic seat with an independent lift of the head and would go no further. She felt that she deserved his confidence and trust. Upon her face were tears of pained emotion. She did not know her real place in his life and whenever she struggled for it her suffering was intense. There was a pause. Glenn decided to humor her. Taking a seat beside her, he began in his tone of tranquil philosophy: “Suppose a man--young--under an infatuation, becomes engaged to a girl. When he is older, his ideas change; he gets over it, she doesn’t. Although he has a sincere regard and respect for her, in his heart there is another ideal. He regrets being bound. What should he do?” “I hate the word ‘bound.’ Marriage is not to bind, but to privilege. Without love it would be nothing more than slavery. Every human soul revolts at that.” “But an engagement is like a gambling debt; it has no witnesses. It puts a man upon his honor.” “Might he not have the nobility to assume his vows, without the fortitude to endure them manfully? That would make each think nothing of love and little of life. I believe it is impossible for a man to be true to his wife with another woman’s image in his heart; in spite of outward appearances the emptiness is there--convention cannot crush out nature. If he took a vow like that, he’d be false to it; hypocracy is dishonor.” She suddenly fronted him. “What would you do if you were the man?” “Oh, don’t make an example of me,” he said in a hard voice. “You know me well enough to guess what I would do.” She turned her eyes to his face; her expression changed. “You would be true to what you thought was your honor.” “I hope I would fulfill any promise I should make.” He had always had himself in command, yet he was sometimes conscious of a fear that Esther might have dreamed some touch of heroism in his nature, which was not there. Her ideal of him had been impressed upon her immaturity. “I have a story about a man’s honor,” she said after an awkward silence, lifting a small paper volume in her hand. “The young man on my floor asked me to take it and read it. He said it was ‘simply great.’” “‘Simply great,’ was it?” Glenn said, taking the book. “Certainly he is bold and unconventional enough to presume to offer you a book when you have scarcely a speaking acquaintance with him.” “He brought it to my door one rainy day; I took it as a kindness.” Reading the French title, Glenn’s eyes took on the glint of steel. “Have you read it?” he asked. “No, I thought we might begin it together to-day.” “Well, we won’t,” he told her, frankly. “It is not the kind for you to read. When the young man inquires for his book you can send him to me.” Glenn was never more savagely angry as he doubled the book and thrust it into his pocket. He would keep from her that part of the world’s evil at least.