to-night!_" With a gesture of instinctive
repugnance, with a look of supplicating horror, she pushed him away.

"Only devils tempt like that!"

"No devil ever yet tempted a woman to right-doing."

"It could not be right to treat Rube so."

"It is the only way to right a wrong already done him."

"No. I am going to make that wrong up to Rube. I have sworn to do it!
I am going to stick by Rube through thick and thin. You go away! What
did you come here for? Dark is the fate of the woman who breaks her
plighted vows."

"Darker still the fate of the woman who seals false vows. Such are
untrue to the high instincts of the immortal within them."

"But think how infamous! how base such an act! how scandalous! I
cannot do it!"

"Yet, you will do worse--far worse. A loveless marriage is worse than
a broken vow. Such a marriage may pass current for legal tender in the
courts of the world, but when some day, you come to square up
accounts, you will find fraudulent bonds and unholy speculation in
married estate the worst investment a foolish woman ever made.
Dishonesty never pays, but it pays less in a marriage without love
than anywhere else. And where's the use of trying to deceive Rube and
the rest of the world, when God knows? You can't very well hoodwink
_Him_, Mell. And how will you be able to endure it; to be clothed in
marvellously fine garments and ride in a chariot, and envy the beggars
as you pass them in their honest rags; to be a Jonas in every kiss, a
Machiavelli in every word, a crocodile in every tear; Janus-faced on
one side, and mealy-mouthed on the other; to be a fraud, a sham, a
make-believe, an organized humbug, and a painted sepulchre? That's the
picture of the woman who marries one man and loves another. Is it a
pleasant picture, Mell? You will chafe behind the gilded bars, and
champ the jewelled bit. You will feel the sickening thraldom of a
cankering memory, a rankling regret, a sullen remorse, a longing after
your true self, with every breath a lie, every act a counterfeit,
every word a mincing of the truth. God only knows how you will bear
it!"

God only--she did not. Her head drooped lower in unspeakable
bitterness and humiliation. Amid all the darkness she could see but
one ray of light.

"But if I do my duty--" began Mell.

"A woman's first duty to her husband is to love him," said Jerome,
gravely; "failing in that, she fails in all else."

"But love comes with the doing of duty, every