“Oh Belle do stop, what a train of horrors you can conjure out of an innocent glass of wine.”

“Anything can be innocent that sparkles to betray, that charms at first, but later will bite like an adder and sting like a serpent.”

“Really!  Belle, if you keep on at this rate you will be a monomaniac on the temperance question.  However I do not think Mr. Romaine will feel highly complimented to know that you refused him because you dreaded he might become a drunkard.  You surely did not tell him so.”

“Yes I did, and I do not think that I would have been a true friend to him, had I not done so.”

“Oh!  Belle, I never could have had the courage to have told him so.”

“Why not?”

“I would have dreaded hurting his feelings.  Were you not afraid of offending him?”

“I certainly shrank from the pain which I knew I must inflict, but because I valued his welfare more than my own feelings, I was constrained to be faithful to him.  I told him that he was drifting where he ought steer, that instead of holding the helm and rudder of his young life, he was floating down the stream, and unless he stood firmly on the side of temperance, that I never would clasp hands will him for life.”

“But Belle, perhaps you have done him more harm than good; may be you could have effected his reformation by consenting to marrying him.”

“Jeanette, were I the wife of a drunken man I do not think there is any depth of degradation that I would not fathom with my love and pity in trying to save him.  I believe I would cling to him, if even his own mother shrank from him.  But I never would consent to [marry any man?], whom I knew to be un[?]steady in his principles and a moderate drinker.  If his love for me and respect for himself were not strong enough to reform him before marriage, I should despair of effecting it afterwards, and with me in such a case discretion would be the better part of valor.”

“And so you have given Mr. Romaine a release?”

“Yes, he is free.”

“And I think you have thrown away a splendid opportunity.”

“I don’t think so, the risk was too perilous.  Oh Jeanette, I know by mournful and bitter experience what it means to dwell beneath the shadow of a home cursed by intemperance.  I know what it is to see that shadow deepen into the darkness of a drunkard’s grave, and I dare not run the fearful risk.”

“And yet Belle this has cost you a great deal, I can see it in the wanness of your face, in your eyes which in spite of yourself, are filled with sudden tears, I know from the intonations of your voice that you are suffering intensely.”

“Yes Jeanette, I confess, it was like tearing up the roots of my life to look at this question fairly and squarely in the face, and to say, no; but I must learn to suffer and be strong, I am deeply pained, it is true, but I do not regret the steps I have taken.  The man who claims my love and allegiance, must be a victor and not a slave.  The reeling brain of a drunkard is not a safe foundation on which to build up a new home.”