ailing.

Rebecca (walking about, wringing her hands). It is impossible. It is
only something you want to make me believe. Nothing in the world will
make me believe it. It cannot be true! Nothing in the world--

Kroll (getting up). But, my dear Miss West, why in Heaven's name do you
take it in this way? You quite alarm me! What am I to believe and think?

Rebecca. Nothing. Neither believe nor think anything.

Kroll. Then you really must give me some explanation of your taking
this matter--this possibility--so much to heart.

Rebecca (controlling herself). It is quite obvious, I should think, Mr.
Kroll. I have no desire for people here to think me an illegitimate
child.

Kroll. Quite so. Well, well, let us be content with your explanation,
for the present. But you see that is another point on which you have
cherished a certain prejudice.

Rebecca. Yes, that is quite true.

Kroll. And it seems to me that very much the same applies to most of
this "emancipation" of yours, as you call it. Your reading has
introduced you to a hotch-potch of new ideas and opinions; you have
made a certain acquaintance with researches that are going on in
various directions--researches that seem to you to upset a good many
ideas that people have hitherto considered incontrovertible and
unassailable. But all this has never gone any further than knowledge in
your case, Miss West--a mere matter of the intellect. It has not got
into your blood.

Rebecca (thoughtfully). Perhaps you are right.

Kroll. Yes, only test yourself, and you will see! And if it is true in
your case, it is easy to recognise how true it must be in John
Rosmer's. Of course it is madness, pure and simple. He will be running
headlong to his ruin if he persists in coming openly forward and
proclaiming himself an apostate! Just think of it--he, with his shy
disposition! Think of HIM disowned--hounded out of the circle to which
he has always belonged--exposed to the uncompromising attacks of all
the best people in the place. Nothing would ever make him the man to
endure that.

Rebecca. He MUST endure it! It is too late now for him to draw back.

Kroll. Not a bit too late--not by any means too late. What has happened
can be hushed up--or at any rate can be explained away as a purely
temporary, though regrettable, aberration. But--there is one step that
it is absolutely essential he should take.

Rebecca. And that is?

Kroll. You must get him to legalise his position