"Break with him! Why he has never been mine. There is nothing to be broken. It was all a delusion and a dream. I thought he loved me--loved me exactly as I loved him--with the one great and perfect love of a lifetime--and now I know that he never loved me--how could he after having only just left off loving this other woman?--if he had left off loving her. And how could he when she is so perfectly lovely? Why should he have ever ceased to care for her? She had been like his wife, you say--his wife in all but the name--and all the world knew it. What must people have thought of me for stealing away another woman's husband?" "My dear, the world does not see it in that light. She never was really his wife." "She ought to have been," answered Christabel, resolutely, yet with quivering lips. "If he cared for her so much as to make himself the world's wonder for her sake he should have married her: a man should not play fast and loose with love." "It is difficult for us to judge," said Mrs. Tregonell, believing herself moved by the very spirit of justice, "we are not women of the world--we cannot see this matter as the world sees it." "God forbid that I should judge as the world judges," exclaimed Christabel, lifting her head for the first time since that story had been told her. "That would be a sorry end of your teaching. What ought I to do?" "Your own heart must be the arbiter, Christabel. I made up my mind this afternoon that I would not seek to influence you one way or the other. Your own heart must decide." "My own heart? No; my heart is too entirely his--too weakly, fondly, foolishly, devoted to him. No, I must think of something beyond my foolish love for him. His honour and mine are at stake. We must be true to ourselves, he and I. But I want to know what you think, Auntie. I want to know what you would have done in such a case. If, when you were engaged to his father, you had discovered that he had been within only a little while"--these last words were spoken with inexpressible pathos, as if here the heart-wound were deepest--"the lover of another woman--bound to her by ties which a man of honour should hold sacred--what would you have done? Would you have shut your eyes resolutely upon that past history? Would you have made up your mind to forget everything, and to try to be happy with him?"