"You said that to Mallard?"

"Yes. It can be nothing to me what you think of it. I had waited here
till I could bear loneliness no longer; I knew I had one true friend,
and I went to him."

"You behaved as no self-respecting woman could!" Elgar exclaimed
passionately.

"If so," she answered, meeting his look, "the shame falls only on
myself."

"That is not true! You yourself seem to be unconscious of the shame; to
me it is horrible suffering. I thought you incapable of anything of the
kind. I looked up to you as a high-minded woman, and I loved you for
your superiority to myself."

"You loved me?" she asked, with a bitter smile.

"Yes; believe it or not, as you like. Because I was maddened by sensual
passion for a creature whom I never one moment respected, how did that
lessen my love for you? You complain that I kept away from you; I did
so because I was still racked by that vile torment, and shrank in
reverence from approaching you. You might have known me well enough to
understand this. Have I not told you a thousand times that in me soul
and body have lived separate lives? Even when I seemed sunk in the
lowest depths, I still loved you purely and truly; I loved you all the
more because I was conscious of my brutal faults. Now you have
destroyed my ideal; you have degraded yourself in my esteem. It is
nothing to me now, do what you may! I can never forgive you. By doing
yourself wrong, you have wronged me beyond all words!"

Cecily could not take her eyes from him. She marvelled at such emotion
in him. But the only way in which it affected her own feeling was to
make her question herself anxiously as to whether she had really fallen
below her self-respect. Had she led Mallard to think of her with like
disapproval?

Life is so simple to people of the old civilization. The rules are laid
down so broadly and plainly, and the conscience they have created
answers so readily when appealed to. But for these poor instructed
persons, what a complex affair has morality become! Hard enough for
men, but for women desperate indeed. Each must be her own casuist, and
without any criterion save what she can establish by her own
experience. The growth of Cecily's mind had removed her further and
further from simplicity of thought; this was in part the cause of that
perpetual sense of weariness to which she awoke day after day.
Communion with such a man as Elgar strengthened the natural tendency,
until there was scarcel