"How do I know that Annette is unworthy of him? She may have done wrong and still be worthy of him. Do you not see that if I decided she was unworthy and hurried my son away, I should be acting on the same principle as I did in my own youth, the old weary principle which has pressed so hard on women, that you can treat a fellow-creature like a picture or a lily, or a sum of money? I handed over my love just as if she had been a lily. How often I had likened her to one! But she was alive, poor soul, all the time, and I only found it out when she was dying, years and years afterwards. Only then did my colossal selfishness confront me. She was a fellow-creature like you and me. What was it Shylock said? 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?' Now, for aught we know to the contrary, Annette _may be_ alive." His grave eyes met hers, with a light in them, gentle, inexorable. "Unless we are careful we may make her bleed. We have the knife ready to our hands. If you were in her place, and had a grievous incident in your past, would anything wound you more deeply than if she, she your friend, living in the same village, raked up that ugly past, and made it public for no reason?" "But there is a reason," said Janey passionately,--"not a reason that everyone should know, God forbid, but that one person should be told, who may marry her in ignorance, and who would never marry her if he knew what you and I know--never, never, never!" "And what would you do in her place, in such a predicament?" "I should not be in it, because when he asked me to marry him I should tell him everything." "Perhaps that is just what she will do. Knowing her intimately as you do, can you think that she would act meanly and deceitfully? I can't." Janey avoided his searching glance, and made no answer. "You can't either," he said tranquilly. "And do you think she would lie about it?" "No," said Janey slowly, against her will. "Then let us, at any rate, give her her chance of telling him herself." He got up slowly, and Janey did the same. He saw that her stubbornness though shaken was not vanquished, and that he should obtain no assurance from her that she would be silent. "And let us give this man, whoever he may be, his chance too," he said, taking her hand and holding it. He felt it tremble, and his heart ached for her. He had guessed. "The chance of being loyal, the chance of being tender, generous, understanding. Do not let us wreck it by interference. This is a matter which lies between her and him, and between her and him only. It may be the making of him. It would have been the making of me if I could but have taken it--my great chance--if I had not preferred to sacrifice her, in order to be a sham hero." CHAPTER XXVI