“For me to take as my wife a woman who could not respect her?” Will questioned. “My mother’s memory for me is the sacredest of sacred things. You know something of her history. You know that she was in every sense but a legal sense my father’s wife. You know why they couldn’t be married legally. You know, too, how he treated her—and how she died. Do you suppose I could marry a woman who would always think of my mother as of one who had done something shameful?” “Oh, but no woman with a spark of nobility in her soul would or could do that,” Johannah cried. “Every woman brought up in the usual way, with the usual prejudices, the usual traditions, thinks evil of the woman who has had an illegitimate child,” asserted he. “Not every woman. I, for instance. Do you imagine that I could think evil of your mother, Will?” She looked at him intensely, earnestly. “Oh, you’re entirely different from other women. You’re——” But he stopped at that. “Then—just for the sake of a case in point—if I were the woman you chanced to be in love with, and if I simultaneously chanced to be in love with you, you could see your way to marrying me?” she pursued him. “What’s the use of discussing that?” “For its metaphysical interest. Answer me.” “There are other reasons why I couldn’t marry you.” “I’m not good-looking enough?” she cried. “Don’t be silly.” “Not young enough?” “Oh, I say! Let’s talk of something reasonable.” “Not old enough, perhaps?” He was silent. “Not wise enough? Not foolish enough?” she persisted. “You’re foolish enough, in all conscience,” said he. “Well, then, why? What are the reasons why you couldn’t marry me?” “What is the good of talking about this?” he groaned. “I want to know. A man has the hardihood to inform me to my face that he’d spurn my hand, even if I offered it to him. I insist upon knowing why.” She feigned high indignation. “You know why. And you know that ’spurn’ is very far from the right word,” was his rejoinder. “I don’t know why. I insist upon your telling me,” she repeated, fierily. “You know that you’re Sir William Silver’s heiress, I suppose,” he suggested. “Oh, come! that’s not my fault. How could that matter?” “Look here, I’m not going to make an ass of myself by explaining the obvious,” he declared. “I daresay I’m very stupid, but it isn’t obvious to me.” “Well, then, let’s drop the subject,” he proposed. “I’ll not drop the subject till you’ve elucidated it. If you were in love with me, Will, and I were in love with you, how on earth could it matter, my being Sir William Silvers heiress?” “Wouldn’t I seem a bit mercenary’ if I asked you to marry me?”