doesn't remember very
well. And you make ties and habits and all these have to be thrown
overboard when the second time happens, and there's scandal, and cold
shoulders, and--what do you think I _ought_ to do? If I can't give him
what he's paying for oughtn't I to cut loose on my own, to support
myself, and not be a burden to him and a ubiquitous reminder that we've
failed to make a go of living together? What _ought_ I to do?"

It had become very hard for me to tell her what I thought she ought to
do. Ever since that moment when I had first known that I wanted to
take her in my arms and comfort her, I had begun to have doubts of my
own honesty. And now she had put that honesty to a definite test, and
I was determined that it should come through the ordeal alive.

"Must I really tell you what I think you ought to do?"

"Yes."

"Some of the things I think you ought to do, are things that I know you
don't want to do--things that you think perhaps you _can't_ do. Women
often say _can't_ when they mean _won't_, don't they?"

"Maybe."

"I'm afraid you aren't going to like what I'm going to say, nor me for
saying it."

"Try me," she said, and she gave me a look of great trust and
understanding.

"I'm going to tell you what I think you ought to do, Lucy, and what I
think you ought to have done."

Any teacher whose scholars looked at him with the trustfulness and
expectation with which Lucy now looked at me, must be inspired, I
think, to the very top notch of his sense of honor and duty. I am sure
at least that I laid the law down of what I thought she should do, and
should have done with complete honesty and without regard to
consequences. If I got nothing better for my pains than dislike, at
least I could criticize her conduct and character without being biased
by my growing affection for her.

"In the first place," I said, "when you found out that you no longer
loved your husband, you made your first mistake. By your own admission
he had given you everything in the way of devotion and faithfulness
that a man can give a woman. When you found that you no longer loved
him, you shouldn't have told him. He ought never to have known. You
should have summoned all your fortitude and delicacy to deceive him
into thinking that you had not changed toward him, and never would."

"I _couldn't_!" exclaimed Lucy.

"You wouldn't," I said.

"It wouldn't have been honest."

"Perhaps not. But it would have been