“I don’t know.  They’re not qualms—­in the old sense.”  She smiled down at me a little tearfully.  “Hugh, do you remember when we used to go to Sunday-school at Dr. Pound’s church, and Mrs. Ewan taught us?  I really believed something then—­that Moses brought down the ten commandments of God from the mountain, all written out definitely for ever and ever.  And I used to think of marriage” (I felt a sharp twinge), “of marriage as something sacred and inviolable,—­something ordained by God himself.  It ought to be so—­oughtn’t it?  That is the ideal.”

“Yes—­but aren’t you confusing—?” I began.

“I am confusing and confused.  I shouldn’t be—­I shouldn’t care if there weren’t something in you, in me, in our—­friendship, something I can’t explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in which we have lived our lives—­something which, I think, we saw clearer as children.  We have lost it in our hasty groping.  Oh, Hugh, I couldn’t bear to think that we should never find it! that it doesn’t really exist!  Because I seem to feel it.  But can we find it this way, my dear?” Her hand tightened on mine.

“But if the force drawing us together, that has always drawn us together, is God?” I objected.

“I asked you,” she said.  “The time must come when you must answer, Hugh.  It may be too late, but you must answer.”

“I believe in taking life in my own hands,” I said.

“It ought to be life,” said Nancy.  “It—­it might have been life....  It is only when a moment, a moment like this comes that the quality of what we have lived seems so tarnished, that the atmosphere which we ourselves have helped to make is so sordid.  When I think of the intrigues, and divorces, the self-indulgences,—­when I think of my own marriage—­” her voice caught.  “How are we going to better it, Hugh, this way?  Am I to get that part of you I love, and are you to get what you crave in me?  Can we just seize happiness?  Will it not elude us just as much as though we believed firmly in the ten commandments?”

“No,” I declared obstinately.

She shook her head.

“What I’m afraid of is that the world isn’t made that way—­for you—­for me.  We’re permitted to seize those other things because they’re just baubles, we’ve both found out how worthless they are.  And the worst of it is they’ve made me a coward, Hugh.  It isn’t that I couldn’t do without them, I’ve come to depend on them in another way.  It’s because they give me a certain protection,—­do you see? they’ve come to stand in the place of the real convictions we’ve lost.  And—­well, we’ve taken the baubles, can we reach out our hands and take—­this?  Won’t we be punished for it, frightfully punished?”

“I don’t care if we are,” I said, and surprised myself.

“But I care.  It’s weak, it’s cowardly, but it’s so.  And yet I want to face the situation—­I’m trying to get you to face it, to realize how terrible it is.”