out with the truth, to tell them what you were too
chivalrous to tell! For your sake and Anna's I couldn't do it, of
course, but you may imagine that it's made me a silent champion of
yours, just the same! But our marriage was a mistake, Jim," she went on
slowly and thoughtfully. "It was all very well for me to try to make
myself over; I couldn't make you! I never should have tried.
Theoretically, I had made a clean breast of it, and was forgiven; but
actually, the law was too strong. It's hard and strange that it should
be so, isn't it? I don't understand it; I never shall. For still it
seems as if the punishment followed, not so much the fact, as the fact's
being made known. If I had robbed some one fifteen years ago, or taken
the name of the Lord in vain, I wonder if it would have been the same?
As for keeping holy the seventh day, and honouring your father and
mother, and not coveting your neighbour's goods, how little they seem to
count! Even the most virtuous and rigid people would forgive and forget
fast enough in _those_ cases. It's all a puzzle." Julia's voice and look,
which had grown dreamy, now brightened suddenly. "And so the best thing
to do about it," she went on, "seems to me to make your own conscience
your moral law, and feel that what you have repented truly, is truly
forgiven. So much for me." She met his eyes. "But, my dear Jim, I never
could take it for granted again that _you_ felt so about it!"

"Then you do me an injustice," said Jim, "for I swear--"

"Oh, don't swear!" she interrupted. "I know you believe that now, as you
did once before. But I know you better than you do yourself, Jim. Your
attitude to me is always generous, but it's always conventional, too.
You never would remind me of all this, I know that very well, but
always, in your own heart, the reservation would be there, the regret
and the pity! I know that I am a better woman and a stronger woman for
all this thinking and suffering; you never will believe that. Let us
suppose that we began again. Don't you know that the day would come when
my opinion would clash with that of some other woman in society, and
you, knowing what you know of me, would feel that I was not qualified to
judge in these things as other women are? Let us suppose that I wanted
to befriend a maid who had got herself into trouble, or to take some
wayward girl into my house for a trial; how patient would you be with
me, under the circumstances?"

"Of course, y