We are not
in America."
He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb. He stood
before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind
the shelter of reasonable words.
"Let me tell you," he began, "why our divorce laws are so different
from yours. We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment
is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a
shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and
besmirching thereby her life with evil. We believe, on the other hand,
that there is no sin in love."
"If you and I were alone in the world!"
"If you are thinking of your friends," he pleaded, "they are more likely
to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a
debasing union. Every one realises--what your husband is. He has been
unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had."
"Do I not know it!" she moaned. "Isn't the pain of it there in my heart,
hour by hour!"
His reasonableness was deserting him. Again he was the lover, begging for
his rights.
"Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart," he begged. "I'll buy you from
him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you--I don't care which.
Anything sooner than let you go."
"I don't want to go," she confessed, afraid of her own words, shivering
with the meaning of them.
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