"Yes, Austin, but--Perhaps I won't have to stay away a whole year--perhaps by spring--or we might be married now, just as we planned, and take Edith with us." "No, no!" he cried; "you know I wouldn't do that--I want you all to myself!" Then, still more passionately, "You're only twenty-two yourself--you shan't darken your own youth with--this--this horrible thing. You've seen sorrow and sin enough--far, far too much! You've a right to be happy now, to live your own life--and so have I." "And hasn't Edith any right?" "No--she's forfeited hers." "Do you really think so? Do you believe that a young, innocent, sheltered girl, so pretty and so magnetic that she attracts immediate attention wherever she goes, who has starved for pretty things and a good time, and suddenly finds them within her reach, whose parents wilfully shut their eyes to the fact that she's growing up, and boast that 'they've kept everything from her'--and then let her go wherever she chooses, with that pitiful lack of armor, doesn't deserve another chance? And I think if you had stayed with her through last night--and seen the change that suffering--and shame--and hopelessness have wrought in that little gay, lovely, thoughtless creature, you'd feel that she had paid a pitifully large forfeit already--and realize that no matter how much we help her, she'll have to go on paying it as long as she lives." Austin was silent for a moment; then he muttered: "Well, why doesn't she marry Jack Weston? She admits that it was half her fault--and that he really does care for her." "_Marry_ him!" Sylvia cried,--"_after that_! He cares for her as much as it is in him to care for anybody--but you know perfectly well what he is! Do you want her to tie herself forever to an ignorant, intemperate, sensual man? Put herself where the nightmare of her folly would stare her perpetually in the face! Where he'd throw it in her teeth every time he was angry with her, that he married her out of charity--and probably tell the whole countryside the same thing the first time he went to Wallacetown on a Saturday evening and began to 'celebrate'? How much chance for hope and salvation would be left for her then? Have you forgotten something you said to me once--something which wiped away in one instant all the bitterness and agony of three years, and sent me--straight into your arms? 'The best part of a decent man's love is not passion, but reverence; his greatest desire, not possession, but protection; his ultimate aim, not gratification, but sacrifice.'" "I didn't guess then what a beautiful and wonderful thing passion could be--I'd only seen the other side of it." Sylvia winced, but she only said, very gently: "Then can you, with that knowledge, wish Edith to keep on seeing it all her life? It's--it's pretty dreadful, I think--remember I've seen it too."