"Don't try to argue the--"

"It's right that you should let that glorious, perfect young creature
wither and droop with time, grow old without--oh, Lordy, what a damn fool
you are, Brady! There isn't the slightest reason in this world why you
shouldn't get married and--"

"Stop that, Simmy!"

"Here you are, two absolutely sound, strong, enduring specimens of
humanity,--male and female,--loving each other, wanting each other,--and yet
you say you can never be anything to each other! Hasn't nature anything to
do with it? Are you going to sit there and tell me that for some
obstinate, mawkish reason you think you ought to deprive her of the one
man in all this world that she wants and must have? It doesn't matter what
she did a couple of years ago. It doesn't matter that she was,--and still
may be designing,--the fact remains that she is the woman you love and that
you are her man. She married old Mr. Thorpe deliberately, I grant you. She
doesn't deny it. She loved you when she did it. And you can't, to save
your soul, hate her for it. You ought to do so, I admit. But you don't,
and that solves the problem. You want her now even more than you did two
years ago. You can't defy nature, old chap. You may defy convention, and
honour, and even common decency, but you can't beat nature out of its due.
Now, look me in the eye! Why can't you marry Anne and--be everything to
her, instead of nothing, as you put it? Answer me!"

"It is impossible," groaned Thorpe. "You cannot understand, Simmy."

"Nothing is impossible," said Simmy, the optimist. "If you are afraid of
what people will say about it, then all I have to say is that you are
worse than a coward: you are a stupid ass. People talked themselves black
in the face when she married your grandfather, and what good did it do
them? Not a particle of good. They roasted her to a fare-you-well, and
they called her a mean, avaricious, soulless woman, and still she
survives. Everybody expects her to marry you. When she does it, everybody
will smile and say 'I told you so,'--and sneer a little, perhaps,--but, hang
it all, what difference should that make? This is a big world. It is
busier than you think. It will barely take the time to sniff twice or
maybe three times at you and Anne and then it will hustle along on the
scent of something new. It's always smelling out things, but that's all it
amounts to. It overlooks divorces, liaisons, murders,--everything, in fact,
except disappo