“Does it not strike you that this is irrelevant? You are not my husband--not my slave. But, to be less personal, Mr. Anson’s wife was not responsible for his loving her. Love, as I take it, is a voluntary thing. It pleased him to love her--he would not have done it if it did not please him; probably his love was an inconvenient thing domestically--if he had no tact.” “Of that,” I said, “neither you nor I can know with any certainty. But, to be scriptural, she reaped where she had not sowed, and gathered where she had not strawed. If she did not make the man love her,--I believe she did, as I believe you would, perhaps unconsciously, do,--she used his love, and was therefore better able to make all other men admire her. She was richer in personal power for that experience; but she was not grateful for it nor for his devotion.” “You mean, in fact, that I--for you make the personal application--shall be better able henceforth to win men’s love, because--ah, surely, Dr. Marmion, you do not dignify this impulse, this foolishness of yours, by the name of love!” She smiled a little satirically at the fingers I had kissed. I was humiliated, and annoyed with her and with myself, though, down in my mind, I knew that she was right. “I mean,” said I, “that I can understand how men have committed suicide because of just such things. My wonder is that Anson, poor devil! did not do it.” I knew I was talking foolishly. “He hadn’t the courage, my dear sir. He was gentlemanly enough to die, but not to be heroic to that extent. For it does need a strong dash of heroism to take one’s own life. As I conceive it, suicide would have been the best thing for him when he sinned against the code. The world would have pitied him then, would have said, He spared us the trial of punishing him. But to pay the vulgar penalty of prison--ah!” She shuddered and then almost coldly continued: “Suicide is an act of importance; it shows that a man recognises, at least, the worthlessness of his life. He does one dramatic and powerful thing; he has an instant of great courage, and all is over. If it had been a duel in which, of intention, he would fire wide, and his assailant would fire to kill, so much the better; so much the more would the world pity. But either is superior, as a final situation, than death with a broken heart--I suppose that is possible?--and disgrace, in a hospital.” “You seem to think only of the present, only of the code and the world; and as if there were no heroism in a man living down his shame, righting himself heroically at all points possible, bearing his penalty, and showing the courage of daily wearing the sackcloth of remorse and restitution.”