with the proofs of her innocence in my
hands, and removed their private sorrow, that wouldn't have repaired
their public wrong. Nobody was going to believe in Viola's innocence.
Appearances were dead against her.

It was awful for them every way they looked at it; awful if she married
Jevons just because she had to; awful even if she hadn't to, so long as
people thought she had; awful if she married him for any reason; more
awful if she didn't marry him at all. And supposing she married him. They
might go on ignoring for ever and ever, but who else would, with that
marriage staring them in the face and perpetuating the disgraceful
memory?

It struck me that Viola herself must see that there was only one way in
which I could make them understand, only one thing that I could do for
her, and that I had come to do it.

The next morning I asked Canon Thesiger if he could give me half an hour.
He gave it with a sort of sad alacrity. I didn't anticipate the smallest
difficulty with him or with any of Viola's family. They seemed to be
looking to me pathetically to save them. I had every reason to know that
my one chance was good, and that poor Jevons, with all his chances,
wasn't anywhere. In fact, I found in that half-hour with the Canon that
my very fairness to Jevons had worked against him to abase him, while it
raised me several points in the Canon's estimation. He had seen what I
had been driving at. The cleaner I made out Jevons's record to be, the
better I succeeded in shielding Viola. He expressed in the most moving
terms his admiration of my moral beauty.

And yet (I suppose I must have overdone it) it was my moral beauty that
dished me with the Canon. I had reckoned, you see, without his, without
Mrs. Thesiger's.

I told him straight out that if he and Mrs. Thesiger would allow me, I
meant to ask Viola to marry me. His lip stiffened.

I said I hoped it wouldn't be a violent shock to them--they must have had
some idea of what I had come for.

He said, Yes. They had been afraid I had come for that.

And then--oh, it was a terrible half-hour!

They had been afraid, and they had talked it over. He didn't tell me all
they'd said, but I could imagine most of it: how they had seen that my
marrying Viola was the one way out for them, the one way out for her, and
how it had occurred to them that perhaps I didn't know what I was doing,
and how they had decided--dear, simple, honourable people--that it would
be very w