‘I suppose it is your right,’ he answered, ‘to make everything as hard for me as you can. I deserve it, I know. Oh yes, you blot out all thought of everything but you, as soon as I look at you. You are the only thing I can see in the world. And I won’t look at you, Isabel. It is no use. Must I tell you again? I won’t stain the love we have for each other by any further treacheries towards the duty we owe to each other and my wife. Oh, Isabel, if you would only believe me, it is because I love you so awfully, so damnably, that I cannot look at you, or touch you. I love you too much. I ache in all my bones with the love of you, and I love you too much and too well to satisfy my love. Oh, don’t you understand? We could never forgive ourselves, never feel clean again. Our love would have been spoiled, made filthy and horrible with deception and mean lies and beastliness. It’s a sort of responsibility we have, to keep it clean. We can’t kill it; it is there, it always will be there. But, at least, we can prevent it from turning us black and rotten. I’d sell my life, Isabel, to have our love free and honourable--I would, Isabel.’ Isabel laughed. ‘Oh, this dry and tedious discussion!’ she cried. ‘How many men would hair-split and quibble like this? Thank God, I have blood in my veins! My people never cared where or whom or why they loved. They took their pleasure where they found it. They were above all laws but their own desires. No silly conventions and superstitions ruled them. They were big, passionate men and women, with life in their veins, not sawdust.’ ‘Do you care nothing, absolutely nothing,’ he asked, ‘for--well, for feeling that you have behaved as cleanly as you can? Nothing for consequences? Nothing for anything but the pleasure of the moment?’ ‘It is in my blood,’ repeated Isabel arrogantly, investing the crude horror of her selfishness with a certain barbaric grandeur. ‘You know how I hate these huckstering considerations of yours. My self-respect is involved in getting what I want. Defeat is my only shame. And consequences--who cares for them? I know,’ she went on, giving the quotation with proud defiance--‘“I know that about this time there is a prophecy that a Queen of England is to be burned, but I care nothing if I be she, so that I have and hold the love of the King.” The love of my King I have and I hold; what does the rest signify? I told you Queen Anne and I were cousins.’ ‘How I wish,’ he said--‘oh, how I wish to God I could make you understand what I feel. I feel the most contemptible beast on the earth; you alone can help me to win back a little of what I have lost. If only you would make it easier for me, Isabel--if only you would make it easier for me, by believing how ghastly hard it is.’