neither was it
possible to see through the thickness of the privet hedge, nor from
any other point, without being seen.

"You must have imagined it!" he exclaimed.

"I did not imagine that bracelet," Beth replied.

"Well, even if I did give her the bracelet," he said, "you're not
going to be nasty-minded enough to insinuate that there was anything
in that!"

"There was deceit in it," Beth answered, "and in your whole attitude
towards that girl while she was under this roof. If we act so that we
cannot be open and honest about our dealings with people, then there
must be something wrong. Life would be intolerable if it had to be
lived among people any one of whom, while professing friendship for
us, was deceiving us in some vital particular. From the moment that we
act on our own inclinations rather than up to what the noblest of our
friends expect of us, we have gone wrong. But you and I are both young
enough, Dan, to put the past behind us, and forget it. Let us start
together afresh in another place, where there will be no evil
associations, nothing to vex us by reminding us of unhappy days; and
let us be loyal to each other, and honest and open in every act,
making due allowance for each other, and doing our best to help and
please each other. We shall be happy, I am sure. You will see we shall
be very happy."

Dan took his cigar out of his mouth, and flicked the ash from the end
of it with his little finger: "You'd have me give up my appointment
here, I suppose, and the half of my income with it?"

"Most of all I would have you give up your appointment here," she
answered earnestly. "No honest woman can endure to have her husband
pandering to vice. It would not be so much of a sacrifice either," she
added, "for the next session will end this iniquity."

"Thanks to the influence of you cursed women," he exclaimed.

"Thanks to our influence, yes," she answered dispassionately, "and to
some sense of justice in men."

"If you knew how men talk about women who meddle in these matters," he
said, "you would keep out of them, I think."

"Oh, I know the kind of thing they say," she answered, smiling; "but
the people you mean have no influence nowadays. The blatant protest of
the debauched against our demand for a higher standard of life is not
the voice of the community. It is the cry of those who feel their
existence threatened, who only live upon lies, and must be
extinguished when the inevitable day of reckon