“A very cynical attitude and I wish I could change it, Raymond.  You’ve lost your self-respect and you know you’ve done a wrong thing.  Can’t you see that you’ll always suffer it if you take no steps to right it?  You are a man of feeling, and power can’t lessen your feeling.  Every time you see that child, you will know that you have brought a living soul into the world cruelly handicapped by your deliberate will.”

“That’s not a fair argument,” he answered.  “If our rotten laws handicap the baby, it will be my object to nullify the handicap to the best of my ability.  The laws won’t come between me and my child, any more than they came between me and my passion.  I’m not the sort to hide behind the mean English law of the natural child.  But I’m not going to let that law bully me into marriage with Sabina.  I’ve got to think of myself as well as other people.  I won’t say, what’s true—­that if Sabina married me she wouldn’t be happy in the long run; but I will say that I know I shouldn’t be, and I’m not prepared to pay any penalty whatever for what I did, beyond the penalty of my own regrets.”

“If you rule religion out and think you can escape and keep your honour, I don’t know what to say,” she answered.  “For my part I believe Sabina would make you a very good and loving wife.  And don’t fancy, if you refuse her what faithfully you promised her, she will be content with less.”

“That’s her look out.  You won’t be wise, Aunt Jenny, to influence her against a fair and generous offer.  I want her to live a good life, and I don’t want our past love-making to ruin that life, or our child to ruin that life.  If she’s going to pose as a martyr, I can’t help it.  That’s the side of her that wrecked the show, as a matter of fact, and made it very clear to me that we shouldn’t be a happy married couple.”

“Self-preservation is a law of nature.  She only did what any girl would have done in trying to find friends to save her from threatened disaster.”

“Well, I dare say it was natural to her to take that line, and it was equally natural to me to resent it.  At any rate we know where we stand now.  Tell me if there’s anything else.”

“I only warn you that she will accept no benefits of any kind from you, Raymond.  And who shall blame her?”

“That’s entirely her affair, of course.  I can’t do more than admit my responsibilities and declare my interest in her future.”

“She will throw your interest back in your face and teach her child to despise you, as she does.”

“How d’you know that, Aunt Jenny?”

“Because she’s a proud woman.  And because she would lose the friendship of all proud women and clean thinking men if she condoned what you intend to do.  It’s horrible to see you turned from a simple, stupid, but honourable boy, into a hard, selfish, irreligious man—­and all the result of being rich.  I should never have thought it could have made such a dreadful difference so quickly.  But I have not changed, Raymond.  And I tell you this:  if you don’t marry Sabina; if you don’t see that only so can you hold up your head as an honest man and a respectable member of society, worthy of your class and your family, then, I, for one, can have no more to do with you.  I mean it.”