She smiled at the pretty speech.

"Well, as we must never meet again," she said, "what signifies a
moment more or less? If you were to care for me, it would be a pity."

"It is too late now," he said.

"Do not tell me that," she answered gravely. "Under any other
circumstances I should be very glad to see you. I will speak frankly,
and you will understand how it is that I do not choose to see you
again, and ought not to do so. You have too much magnanimity not to
feel that if I were so much as suspected of a second trespass, every
one would think of me as a contemptible and vulgar woman; I should be
like other women. A pure and blameless life will bring my character
into relief. I am too proud not to endeavor to live like one apart in
the world, a victim of the law through my marriage, man's victim
through my love. If I were not faithful to the position which I have
taken up, then I should deserve all the reproach that is heaped upon
me; I should be lowered in my own eyes. I had not enough lofty social
virtue to remain with a man whom I did not love. I have snapped the
bonds of marriage in spite of the law; it was wrong, it was a crime,
it was anything you like, but for me the bonds meant death. I meant to
live. Perhaps if I had been a mother I could have endured the torture
of a forced marriage of suitability. At eighteen we scarcely know what
is done with us, poor girls that we are! I have broken the laws of the
world, and the world has punished me; we both did rightly. I sought
happiness. Is it not a law of our nature to seek for happiness? I was
young, I was beautiful . . . I thought that I had found a nature as
loving, as apparently passionate. I was loved indeed; for a little