"He will--he will! He will know that you have come----" "I told him that I meant to." "And he will think you mean to punish me----" "Yes." "And--oh, don't you see?--he will come to protect me!" The husband again put his hand timidly upon her arm. "My dear," he said, "that is just what I wanted him to do--and what I feared he might not do if I told him that I wanted it. The worst thing about this whole tragedy is that it is unnecessary, a quite useless tragedy. I've thought a great deal since you spoke out plainly to me, and I am beginning to see--even I, who wish not to see it--that you were not so far from right; for if man's stupidity hadn't devised for itself a wholly crooked and muddled system for the conduct of his life, this sort of now common catastrophe simply couldn't happen. Listen." He plucked at her sleeve, and she turned her pale face toward him. "All my life," he went on, "I've been afraid of two things: old age and--something else. Perhaps I've learned better in the last few hours. I've tried to learn that only the laws of man are horrible and bad and that no natural law can be, if we face it for what it is, either repellent or wrong. Before, I tried to be young. I trained myself to be young. I denied my youth, believing that I could strengthen and prolong it. I decided that youth was a state of mind--that it could be retained by an effort of the will. I postponed love with that in mind, and I postponed too long. Then, when I never doubted myself, I married you." He released her arm. "I married you," he continued; "and so, from sinning against myself, I began to sin against another. Much that you said last night was right. I have been selfish. I have robbed you of your youth, and I've given you nothing in return but what a man might give to spoil a child or to flatter a mistress. It wasn't a marriage. I see that now. The white heat of passion fused together two pieces of greatly differing metals, but when the passion cooled, the welding wouldn't hold: the joint snapped. I thought I could hold you. Hold you--as if that could be love which must be held! I took a low advantage of your ignorance of life. I came to you, who knew nothing, and said: 'I will teach you'--but--I was giving you the half-sunshine of the sunset when your just portion was the blaze of noon. I was keeping youth from youth." Her large eyes were tender with tears. "Do you mean it?" she asked. "Do you really mean--all this?" "As I never meant anything else in my life. I violated nature and must pay the price." Throughout all time and lands, he now felt, youth calls to youth, generation to generation, and not all the laws upon the statute-books of all the world can silence it. "I've thought that you were ignorant," he was saying; "perhaps you were wiser than I. You are not breaking the law. You are fulfilling it. I was the one that was ignorant. I was the one that was wrong."