"Good God, Sylvia, do stop talking as if the cases were synonymous! _You were married_! It's revolting to me to hear you keep saying that you 'understand.' There's no more likeness between you and Edith than there is between a lily growing in a queen's garden and a sweet-brier rose springing up on a dusty highroad." "I know how you feel, dear; but remember, the sweet-brier rose isn't a _weed_! They're both flowers--and fragrant--and--and fragile, aren't they?" Then, very softly: "Besides, the lily growing in the queen's garden, even though the wicked king may own it for a time, is usually picked in the end--by the fairy prince--to adorn his palace; while the little sweet-brier rose any tramp may pluck and stick in his hat--and fling away when it is faded. And if it was really the property of an honest woodman and his wife, and the highroad ran very close to the border of a sheltered wood, where their cottage was--wouldn't they feel very badly when they found their rose was gone?" "You plead very well," said Austin almost roughly, "and you're pleading for every one _but me_--for Edith and father and mother, who've all done wrong--and now you want to take the burden of their wrongdoing on your own innocent shoulders, and make me help you--no matter how _I_ suffer! _I've_ tried to do _right_--never so hard in all my life--and mostly--I 've succeeded. You've helped--I never could have done it without you--but a lot of it has been pulling myself up by my own bootstraps. Now I've reached the end of my rope--and I suppose, instead of thinking of that --the next thing you do will be to make excuses for Jack Weston." "Yes," said Sylvia, very gently, "that's just what I'm going to do. I know how hard you've tried--I know how well you've succeeded. I know there aren't many men like you--_as good as you_--in the whole world. I'm not saying that because I'm in love with you--I'm not saying it to encourage you--I'm saying it because it's true. You've conquered--all along the line. It's so wonderful--and so glorious--that sometimes it almost takes my breath away. Darling--you know I've never reproached you--even in my own mind--for anything that may have happened before you knew me--and _I_ know, that much as you wish now it never had happened--still you can comfort yourself with the old platitudes of 'the double standard.' 'All men do this some time--or nearly all men. I haven't been any worse than lots of others--and I've always respected _good_ women'--oh, I've heard it all, hundreds of times! Some day I hope you'll feel differently about that, too--that you won't teach _your_ son to argue that way--not only because it's wrong, but because it's dangerous--and very much out of date, besides. This isn't the time to go into all that--but I wonder if you would be willing to tell me everything that went through your mind for five minutes--when I came to you the night of the Graduation Ball, and you took me in your arms?"