less to pretend that I should."

"Not even from the point of view of Mrs. Lessingham and myself?"

"You yourself have never spoken plainly about such things in my
hearing; but I find you in most things a man of your time. And it
doesn't seem to me that Mrs. Lessingham is exactly conventional in her
views."

"You imagine yourself worthy of such a wife at present?"

"Plainly, I do. It would be the merest hypocrisy if I said anything
else. If Cecily loves me, my love for her is at least as strong. If we
are equal in that, what else matters? I am not going to cry _Peccavi_
about the past. I have lived, and you know what that means in my
language. In what am I inferior as a man to Cecily as a woman? Would
you have me snivel, and talk about my impurity and her angelic
qualities? You know that you would despise me if I did--or any other
man who used the same empty old phrases."

"I grant you that," replied Mallard, deliberately. "I believe I am no
more superstitious with regard to these questions than you are, and I
want to hear no cant. Let us take it on more open ground. Were Cecily
Doran my daughter, I would resist her marrying you to the utmost of my
power--not simply because you have lived laxly, but because of my
conviction that the part of your life is to be a pattern of the whole.
I have no faith in you--no faith in your sense of honour, in your
stability, not even in your mercy. Your wife will be, sooner or later,
one of the unhappiest of women. Thinking of you in this way, and being
in the place of a parent to Cecily, am I doing my duty or not in
insisting that she shall not marry you hastily, that even in her own
despite she shall have time to study you and herself, that she shall
only take the irrevocable step when she clearly knows that it is done
on her own responsibility? You may urge what you like; I am not so
foolish as to suppose you capable of consideration for others in your
present state of mind. I, however, shall defend myself from the girl's
reproaches in after-years. There will be no marriage until she is
twenty-one."

A silence of some duration followed. Elgar sat with bent head, twisting
his moustaches. At length:

"I believe you are right, Mallard. Not in your judgment of me, but in
your practical resolve."

Mallard examined him from under his eyebrows.

"You are prepared to wait?" he asked, in an uncertain voice.

"Prepared, no. But I grant the force of your arguments. I will try to
bri