“People! Well, what’ll they say about her?” “Everything defiling that hasn’t occurred.” “And _you_ think that we ought to keep her miserable just because of that--out of fear of tittle-tattle? If she stays with me she’ll be wretched; I shall have to watch myself torturing her--paining her even with my affection. If she goes with you----” “If she goes with me she’ll become a social outcast. She couldn’t bear that; she’d sink under it. No, Randall, we can’t decide this matter as if it concerned only ourselves. It doesn’t. There are all kinds of things involved in it. I’ve been your guest, and you’ve become my friend. We’d look low-down in other people’s eyes. You want her to be happy--none of us could ever be that if we did what you suggest. Don’t you see that you’d be the only one who was playing a decent part? Vi’s part and mine would be contemptible. We’d appear treacherous even to ourselves. As for other people----!! You take me into your house when I’m sick, and I run off with your wife! It can’t be done, Randall.” “But that’s not what I’m proposing,” he said quietly; “I don’t want you to run away together.” “What then?” “I’ll arrange that she shall divorce me. I’ve consulted lawyers. According to the laws of Massachusetts an absolute divorce, which would permit you to marry her within a reasonable time, is only granted on one ground. I’ll provide her with fictitious evidence. She can bring the case against me and I’ll let it go uncontested. She can win her freedom respectably without your name being mentioned.” My position was elaborately false. I wanted her with every atom of my body, and here was I contending that I would not have her. At Ransby I had been willing to steal her, and now she was offered me; but I had not seen how much she meant to Randall then--at that time he was a hostile figure in my imagination. His unselfishness filled me with shame that I had ever thought to wrong him. And yet the thing which he proposed was the inevitable consequence of our actions; his cold reasoning had discerned that. If facts were as he had stated them, what other way was there out? “You agree, then?” “I don’t. You’d save our faces for us, but what d’you suppose we’d think of ourselves? The thing’s not decent. People don’t do things like that. Men can run off with other men’s wives and still respect themselves; if they did what you suggest--take the husband’s happiness and his good name as well--they’d know what to call themselves, though no one else suspected.” “What’s that?” “Blackguards.” “So in your opinion it’s worse to take a wife with her husband’s consent than to steal her? Humph!” He leant across the table for a cigar. With great deliberation he cut the end. When it was well alight, he thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, looking me up and down. When he spoke, he left gaps between his words. There was the rumble of suppressed anger in what he said.