duty. But if it should, I would never
marry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tell
the truth."

"You mean that you would tell her?"

"I mean that I would tell her."

After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all her
anger gone:

"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you have
told me--after it is too late. If you cannot find some way of
letting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tell
her afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If there
is deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving her
than it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, while
she is indifferent and will not care, not after she has given
herself to you and will then have to give you up. But what can
you, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! How
can you know, how can you ever, ever know!"

She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears.

"Isabel--"

"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right to
hear it, as though nothing were changed between us."

"I have not changed."

"How could you tell me! Why did you ever tell me!" she cried
abruptly, grief breaking her down.

"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you. I expected to
do as other men do."

"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon him
with fresh suffering. "You would have taken advantage of my
ignorance and have married me and never have let me know! And you
would have called that deception love and you would have called
yourself a true man!"

"But I did not do this! It was yourself who helped me to see that
the beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception."

"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had you
ever to come near me?"

"I had come to love you!"

"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"

"It gave me the temptation."

"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this? What
did you suppose such a confession would mean to me? Did you
imagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smile
in your face and tell you it made no difference? Was I to hear you
speak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through her
frailties, and then step joyously into her place? Was this the
unfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine? Would I have
been worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I