of such
devotion and self-sacrifice?"

"Good enough!" he cried, and for a moment his merry laughter drowned the
singing overhead.

"But will the world think so?"

"Assuredly. But who cares what the world thinks?"

"We do, dear--we must!"

And then, while the song went on, she began to depreciate herself in a
low voice and with a creeping sense of hypocrisy--to talk of her former
life in London as a danger, of the tobacco-shop, the foreign clubs, the
music hall, and all the mire and slime with which she had been
besmirched. "Everything is known now, dear. Have you never thought of
this? It is your duty to think of it."

But he only laughed again with a joyous voice. "What's the odds?" he
said. "The world is made up for the most part of low, selfish, sensual
beings, incapable of belief in noble aims. Every innovator in such a
world exposes himself to the risk of being slandered or ridiculed, or
even shut up in a lunatic asylum. But who wouldn't rather be St. Theresa
in her cell than Catharine of Russia on her throne? And in your case,
what does it come to anyway? Only that you've gone through the fiery
furnace and come out unscathed. All the better--you'll be a living
witness, a proof that it is possible to pass through this wicked Babylon
unharmed and untouched."

"Yes, if I were a man--but with a woman it is so different! It is an
honour to a man to have conquered the world, but a disgrace to a woman to
have fought with it. Yes, believe me, I know what I'm saying. That's the
cruel tragedy in a woman's life, do what you will to hide it. And then
you are so much in the eye of the world; and besides your own position
there is your family's, your uncle's. Think what it would be if the world
pointed the finger of scorn at your--at your mission--at your high and
noble aims--and all on account of me! You would cease to love me-and
I--I----"

"Listen!" He had been shuffling restlessly on the pavement before her.
"Here I stand! Here are you! Let the waves of public opinion dash
themselves against us--we stand or fall together!" "Oh, oh, oh!"

She was crying on his breast, but with what mixed and conflicting
feelings! Joy, pain, delight, dread, hope, disappointment. She had tried
to dishonour herself in his eyes, and it would have broken her heart if
she had succeeded. But she had failed and he had triumphed, and that was
harder still to bear.

From overhead they heard the last lines of the song:

Erreicht den H