re must be same basis," she urged. "There are responsibilities,
obligations--there must be!--that we can't get away from. I can't help
feeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains;
we made a choice--it's cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what we
want--we shall be punished for it."

"But I'm willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you loved
me--"

"Hugh!" she exclaimed, and I was silent. "You don't understand,"
she went on, a little breathlessly, "what I mean by punishment is
deterioration. Do you remember once, long ago, when you came to me
before I was married, I said we'd both run after false gods, and that
we couldn't do without them? Well, and now this has come; it seems so
wonderful to me, coming again like that after we had passed it by, after
we thought it had gone forever; it's opened up visions for me that I
never hoped to see again. It ought to restore us, dear--that's what I'm
trying to say--to redeem us, to make us capable of being what we were
meant to be. If it doesn't do that, if it isn't doing so, it's the most
horrible of travesties, of mockeries. If we gain life only to have it
turn into death--slow death; if we go to pieces again, utterly. For now
there's hope. The more I think, the more clearly I see that we can't
take any step without responsibilities. If we take this, you'll have me,
and I'll have you. And if we don't save each other--"

"But we will," I said.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "if we could start new, without any past. I married
Ham with my eyes open."

"You couldn't know that he would become--well, as flagrant as he is. You
didn't really know what he was then."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't have anticipated it. I can't claim
that I was deceived, that I thought my marriage was made in heaven. I
entered into a contract, and Ham has kept his part of it fairly well.
He hasn't interfered with my freedom. That isn't putting it on a high
plane, but there is an obligation involved. You yourself, in your law
practice, are always insisting upon the sacredness of contract as the
very basis of our civilization."

Here indeed would have been a home thrust, had I been vulnerable at
the time. So intent was I on overcoming her objections, that I resorted
unwittingly to the modern argument I had more than once declared in
court to be anathema-the argument of the new reform in reference to the
common law and the constitution.

"A contract, no matter how