"You will be spoken of
contemptuously, and he will be 'the fellow who is living with another
man's wife, don't you know,' and that will injure him in many ways."
"Do you think so?" she asked, anxiously.
"I know it," I replied. "And look at it from that or any other point of
view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in
your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all
your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by
it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding
specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they
dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all.
You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People
like you are sensitive about their honour--it is the sign of their
superiority; and the indulgence of love, even at the moment, and under
the most favourable circumstances of youth, beauty, and intellectual
equality, does not satisfy such natures, if the indulgence be not
regulated and sanctified by all that men and women have devised to make
their relations moral.
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