than the mob? And unless a woman is ready to go and live in a cave,
she cannot be happy in the loss of the world's regard, for it can make
her uncomfortable in quite a thousand little ways. Expediency is the
root of all morality. It is stupid to be unmoral, and that is the long
and the short of it. I would marry him to-morrow if I had to cook for
him, if he were dishonoured by his country, if he were smitten
suddenly with ill-health and never could walk again. I am willing to
go through life alone for his sake, even without seeing him, and after
he is dead and gone. I love him absolutely, and if there is another
world I must meet him there. But I am not willing to become a social
pariah on his account."

She never had permitted her mind to linger on the practical aspect of
a different relationship, to admit that such a chapter was possible
outside of her imagination, but she did so now, deliberately. She knew
that what her mother had intimated was true, that the happiness to be
got out of it would amount to very little, and that the day would come
when she would say that it was not worth the price. There were many
times when she was not capable of reasoning coldly on this question,
but she had been listening for two hours to Senator French on the
restriction of immigration, and felt all intellect.

Her mind turned to Harriet. There was a creature foredoomed to
destruction by the forces within her, struggling in vain, assisted and
guarded in vain. Should she, with her inheritance of kindly forces
within and without, deliberately readjust her manifest lines into a
likeness of Harriet Walker's? And she knew that even if she hoodwinked
the world, the miserable deception of it all, the nervous terrors, not
only would wear love down, but shatter her ideals of herself and him.
She would be infinitely more miserable than now.