“He died, did he?” she said. “That was the most graceful thing he could do. So far as my knowledge of the world is concerned, men of his class do NOT die. They live, and they never rise above their degradation. They had not brains or courage enough to keep them out of gaol, and they have not pluck or brains enough to succeed--afterwards. Your friend Anson was quite gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he would always have added to the blight on his wife’s career, and have been an arrow--not a thorn--in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want to do so; it never does. It is long-suffering; it tries not to see and acknowledge things until the culprit himself forces it to take action. Then it says: ‘Now you have openly and inconsiderately broken our bond of mutual forbearance. You make me send you away. Go, then, behind stone walls, and please do not come to me again. If you do, you will only be a troublesome ghost. You will cause awkwardness and distress.’ So, Mr. Anson--I must be polite to him--did the most reasonable and proper thing. He disappeared from the play before it actually became tragedy. There was no tragedy in his death--death is a magnificent ally; it untangles knots. The tragedy was in his living--in the perpetual ruin of his wife’s life, renewed every morning. He disappeared. Then the play became drama, with only a little shadow of tragedy behind it. Now, frankly, am I not right?” “Mrs. Falchion,” I said, “your argument is clever, but it is only incidentally true. You draw life, society and men no more correctly than the author of ‘A Sweet Apocalypse’ would draw you. The social law you sketch when reduced to its bare elements, is remorseless. It does not provide for repentance, for restitution, for recovering a lost paradise. It makes an act final, a sin irrevocable.”