s to send 'em out into domestic service; their
parents scarcely expect it, barely seem to desire it. But after that
time, when they get among strangers and there's nobody with an eye on
them, they fall as victims--if you choose to call it so--to the first
marauder--to the young master, the nephew home for his Christmas
holidays, or the man who comes to tune the piano. If not himself, it
would be somebody else.

And he thought. "Blast it all, am I a man or a mouse? Who's to judge
me, or stan' in my way, if I do what I please? Suppose it's found out,
well, it must be smoothed over, covered up, and put behind the
fireplace. I shan't be Number One that's bin th' same road!" and he
remembered how lightly other married men, his neighbors, country
farmers, or town tradesmen, amused themselves with their servants, and
how their middle-aged wives just had to grin and bear it. "An' Mavis,"
he thought, "can do the same. Heavens an' earth, I've got an answer
ready if she tries to make a fuss, or wants to take the dinner-bell
and go round as public crier--an answer that ought to flatten her as
if a traction engine had bin over her. 'My lass, who began it? Bring
out your slate and put it alongside mine, an' we'll see which looks
dirtiest, all said and done.'" While he was thinking in this manner,
his face became very ugly, with hard deep lines in it, and about the
mouth that cruel pouting expression once seen by Mavis.

He came back to the tree; and sat down, letting his hands hang loose,
his head droop, and his shoulders contract. The fire had gone cold
again.

Now he felt only disgust and horror. Norah's ignorance and disregard
of moral precepts, or readiness to yield to the snares of unlicensed
joy, were summed up in the better and truer word innocence. The
greater her weakness, the greater his wickedness. If he could not save
her from others, he could save her from himself. Then if she fell, it
would at least be a natural fall. It would not be a foul betrayal of
youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes
angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.

When a man has reached a certain time of life he must not crave for
forbidden delights, he must not permit himself to be eaten up with new
desire, he must not risk destroying a girl's soul for the
gratification of his own body. If he does, he commits the unpardonable
sin. And there is no excuse for him.

The Devil's reasonings to