ly, and elicited--

"I'm going to tell Ernest to-morrow that I won't marry him. It's too
terrible--they all tell you the same. I'd rather earn my living in
some other way while I'm able. I'd rather throw up the thing now when
most of my trousseau is ready than go on if one quarter of what they
say is true. I'm not one of those fools who think life is going to
turn out something special for me. Before these women were married I
suppose they thought their husbands were going to be kings, but see
how they have panned out, and why should I expect any better?"

Time had arrived to take the subject in both hands, so I gripped it
firmly.

"You must be thankful to gain one point at a time," I said, beginning
with the lightest end of my argument. "A little while since you feared
you were fated for the life of those around--household drudgery, with
an occasional sulky drive in the afternoon; now that you have escaped
that prospect you are haunted by worse possibilities. No doubt you
hear some saddening and deplorable stories, for some of the laws
relating to marriage are degrading, and the lot of the married woman
in the working class where she is wife, mother, cook, laundress,
needlewoman, charwoman, and often many other things combined, is the
most heartbreakingly cruel and tortured slavery; but you are escaping
the probability of such a purgatorial existence. Take comfort in
knowing that a great percentage of men are infinitely superior to the
laws under which they live, because law is determined by public
opinion, and though it restrains and modifies public behaviour it will
not mould private character. Law is shaped for the masses, but there
is a small percentage of individuals in either sex who are superior to
any workable law, and I think Ernest Breslaw is one of these."

"Do you?" she said, sitting up eagerly. "Would you marry him without
any fear if you were me?"

"I would--right at once. In spite of all its shortcomings I have a
profound belief that not woman, as the poet has it, but all humanity--

'Holds something sacred, something undefiled,
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light.'"

The rain that was temporarily washing the perfume from the flowers
pattered against the window-panes and accentuated the silence, till I
added--

"I will tell you my history some day, so that you may see that when I
have belief in my fellows how little reason you have to fear. I have
been an actress, you know."