"If I thought she would I might stick out, for her sake. It wouldn't bring _me_ much consolation to stick out. I should only be dividing myself from her, as I did for a time from B. I don't want that again. I've learnt something. I stuck out against that fellow because I felt right through me that he wasn't right in himself, for B. If I stood out against Bradby, it would be because he wasn't a match for Caroline in money and position and all that sort of thing. I'm not going to base myself on all that, and show myself incapable of sharing her bigger ideals. And what would be the good? It would hurt her damnably to know that I couldn't stand beside her on that plane; but she'd never come down to mine." Worthing showed himself impressed. "If you think of her like that!" he said. "Well, isn't it the right way to think about her? There are some people in the world whom you can trust never to go wrong. She's one of them. Her mother was another. If her mother had been alive, she'd have backed her up. I've tried my best to stand for what she would have done towards our children, but a man can only make a clumsy job of that at his best. Still, where I see it, I'm going to take her line rather than my own. I'd have trusted her; and I trust Caroline." Worthing was silent for a time. Then he said: "Well, I hope you're right about it. I can't say it looks anything but odd to me. I don't think you can care about it much yourself, either. You must have had a difficult time bringing yourself to your present way of thinking. I can see that. It does you a lot of credit." Grafton sat silent too, looking down. Presently he said, as if summing it all up: "I trust Caroline. If I don't see it as she does, it's because my ideas aren't likely to be as right as hers. But for my own sake, and hers too, I shall try to see it as she does. And I shall stand between her and her relations. I shan't say as much to any of them as I have to you. We'd better go up to them, I think. Don't let him see what you think about it, more than you can help. Make the best of him." Grafton had a talk with Maurice alone the next morning. He had never found it easy to talk to him, except where it was a question of the things he knew about. He had as little of the art of general conversation as a young man of his age very well could have, and his diffidence had made him even rather tiresome as a companion. But there was none in the way he spoke now. He had gained Caroline's love, which made him feel himself a king among men, though in desert still far beneath her. He was full of gratitude for the gift of her love, and he was grateful too to her father for his acceptance of him as her lover.