“But I don’t love Maude, and Maude doesn’t love me.  I grant it’s my fault, that I did her a wrong in marrying her, but she is right in leaving me.  I should be doing her a double wrong.  And the children will be happy with her, they will be well brought up.  I, too, have thought this out, Nancy,” I insisted, “and the fact is that in our respective marriages we have been, each of us, victims of our time, of our education.  We were born in a period of transition, we inherited views of life that do not fit conditions to-day.  It takes courage to achieve happiness, initiative to emancipate one’s self from a morality that begins to hamper and bind.  To stay as we are, to refuse to take what is offered us, is to remain between wind and water.  I don’t mean that we should do anything—­hastily.  We can afford to take a reasonable time, to be dignified about it.  But I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that matters in the world is a love like ours, and its fulfilment.  Achievement, success, are empty and meaningless without it.  And you do love me—­you’ve admitted it.”

“Oh, I don’t want to talk about it,” she exclaimed, desperately.

“But we have to talk about it,” I persisted.  “We have to thrash it out, to see it straight, as you yourself have said.”

“You speak of convictions, Hugh,—­new convictions, in place of the old we have discarded.  But what are they?  And is there no such thing as conscience—­even though it be only an intuition of happiness or unhappiness?  I do care for you, I do love you—­”

“Then why not let that suffice?” I exclaimed, leaning towards her.

She drew back.

“But I want to respect you, too,” she said.

I was shocked, too shocked to answer.

“I want to respect you,” she repeated, more gently.  “I don’t want to think that—­that what we feel for each other is—­unconsecrated.”

“It consecrates itself,” I declared.

She shook her head.

“Surely it has its roots in everything that is fine in both of us.”

“We both went wrong,” said Nancy.  “We both sought to wrest power and happiness from the world, to make our own laws.  How can we assert that—­this is not merely a continuation of it?”

“But can’t we work out our beliefs together?” I demanded.  “Won’t you trust me, trust our love for one another?”

Her breath came and went quickly.

“Oh, you know that I want you, Hugh, as much as you want me, and more.  The time may come when I can’t resist you.”

“Why do you resist me?” I cried, seizing her hands convulsively, and swept by a gust of passion at her confession.

“Try to understand that I am fighting for both of us!” she pleaded—­an appeal that wrung me in spite of the pitch to which my feelings had been raised.  “Hugh, dear, we must think it out.  Don’t now.”

I let her hands drop....