"The Spartans were right in destroying the feeble children. Since
I am under such obligations, I cannot resist your logic, and I
admit that it would be poor taste on my part to ask you to support
for me a wife not of your choosing."

"'Good taste' at least should have prevented such a remark. You can
choose for yourself from a score of fine girls of your own station
in rank and wealth."

"Pardon me, but I would rather not inflict my weakness on any of
the score."

"But you would inflict it on one weak in social position and without
any means of support."

"She is the one girl that I have met with who seemed both gentle
and strong, and whose tastes harmonize with my own. But you don't
know her, and never will. You have only learned external facts about
the Jocelyns, and out of your prejudices have created a family of
underbred people that does not exist. Their crime of comparative
poverty I cannot dispute. I have not made the prudential inquiries
which you and father have gone into so carefully. But your logic
is inexorable. As you suggest, I could not earn enough myself to
provide a wife with hairpins. The slight considerations of happiness,
and the fact that Miss Jocelyn might aid me in becoming something
more than a shadow among men, are not to be urged against the solid
reasons you have named."

"Young people always give a tragic aspect to these crude passing