in the ten commandments?"

"No," I declared obstinately.

She shook her head.

"What I'm afraid of is that the world isn't made that way--for you--for
me. We're permitted to seize those other things because they're just
baubles, we've both found out how worthless they are. And the worst
of it is they've made me a coward, Hugh. It isn't that I couldn't do
without them, I've come to depend on them in another way. It's because
they give me a certain protection,--do you see? they've come to stand in
the place of the real convictions we've lost. And--well, we've taken the
baubles, can we reach out our hands and take--this? Won't we be punished
for it, frightfully punished?"

"I don't care if we are," I said, and surprised myself.

"But I care. It's weak, it's cowardly, but it's so. And yet I want to
face the situation--I'm trying to get you to face it, to realize how
terrible it is."

"I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I'll
take care of you--"

I seized her arms, I drew her down to me.

"Don't!" she cried. "Oh, don't!" and struggled to her feet and stood
before me panting. "You must go away now--please, Hugh. I can't bear any
more--I want to think."

I released her. She sank into the chair and hid her face in her
hands....

As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life
into a tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and
romanticist than myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what
the old moralists called the devious paths of sin. In my passion I
had not hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and
the strong took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a
consistent disciple in the professional and business realm. A logical
buccaneer, superman, "master of life" would promptly have extended this
doctrine to the realm of sex. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and
I, our development, was all that mattered, especially my development.
Let every man and woman look out for his or her development, and in the
end the majority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one
better. When it came to putting that theory into practice, however,
one needed convictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that
convictions were precisely what we lacked; what our world in general
lacked. We had desires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not
by defying the world, but by conforming to it: we were ready to