things that change and grow and alter all the time.
We're--so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just misshapen
cripples.... You don't know the motives, you don't know the rush and
feel of things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with
us. You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you
don't know anything."

Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered to
a wry frown. "Haven't we all at times wanted the world put back?" he
grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.

There was a long pause.

"I want her," I said, "and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for
balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate them.
I saw her yesterday.... She's--ill.... I'd take her now, if death were
just outside the door waiting for us."

"Torture?"

I thought. "Yes."

"For her?"

"There isn't," I said.

"If there was?"

I made no answer.

"It's blind Want. And there's nothing ever been put into you to stand
against it. What are you going to do with the rest of your lives?"

"No end of things."

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you are right," I said. "I believe we can save
something--"

Britten shook his head. "Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you," he
said.

His indignation rose. "In the middle of life!" he said. "No man has a
right to take his hand from the plough!"

He leant forward on his desk and opened an argumentative palm. "You
know, Remington," he said, "and I know, that if this could be fended off
for six months--if you could be clapped in prison, or got out of the way
somehow,--until this marriage was all over and settled down for a year,
say--you know then you two could meet, curious, happy, as friends.
Saved! You KNOW it."

I turned and stared at him. "You're wrong, Britten," I said. "And does
it matter if we could?"

I found that in talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had not
been able to find for myself alone.

"I am certain of one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush up this
scandal."

He raised his eyebrows. I perceived now the element of absurdity in me,
but at the time I was as serious as a man who is burning.

"It's our duty," I went on, "to smash now openly in the sight of every
one. Yes! I've got that as clean and plain--as prison whitewash. I am
convinced that we have got to be public to the uttermost now--I mean
it--until every corner of our world knows this story, knows