“I think I have--after a fashion,” he said, mildly; “but dying for a thing is easy; it’s living for it that’s hard. You couldn’t keep it up, Athalia; you couldn’t live for it.” Well, of course, that night was only the beginning. The days and weeks that followed were full of argument, of entreaty, of determination. Perhaps if he had laughed at her.... But it is dangerous to laugh at unhumorous people, for if they get angry all is lost. So he never laughed, nor in all their talks did he ever reproach her for not loving him. Once only his plea was personal--and even then it was only indirectly so. “Athalia,” he said, “there’s only one kind of pain in this world that never gets cured. It’s the pain that comes when you remember that you’ve made somebody who loved you unhappy--not for a principle, but for your own pleasure. I know that pain, and I know how it lasts. Once I did something, just to please myself, that hurt mother’s feelings. I’d give my right hand if I hadn’t done it. It’s twenty-two years ago, and I wasn’t more than a boy, and she forgave me and forgot all about it. I have never forgotten it. I wish to God I could! ‘Thalia, I don’t want you to suffer that kind of pain.” She saw the implication rather than the warning, and she burst out, angrily, that she wasn’t doing this for “pleasure”; she was doing it for principle! It was for the salvation of her soul! “Athalia,” he said, solemnly, “the salvation of our souls depends on doing our duty.” “Ah!” she broke in, triumphantly, “out of your own lips:--isn’t it my duty to do what seems to me right?” He considered a minute. “Well, yes; I suppose the most valuable example any one can set is to do what he or she believes to be right. It may be wrong, but that is not the point. We must do what we conceive to be our duty. Only, we’ve got to be sure, Tay, in deciding upon duty, in deciding what is right,--we’ve got to be sure that self-interest is eliminated. I don’t believe anybody can decide absolutely on what is right without eliminating self.” She frowned at this impatiently; its perfect fairness meant nothing to her. “You promised to be my wife,” he went on with a curious sternness; “it is obviously ‘right,’ and so it is your first duty to keep your promise--at least, so long as my conduct does not absolve you from it.” Then he added, hastily, with careful justice: “Of course, I’m not talking about promises to love; they are nonsense. Nobody can promise to love. Promises to do our duty are all that count.”