“I am not what I was,” she said, “I am not what I was.  I have been dragged down.”

He bent and lifted her hand from her knee, and raised it to his lips, a homage from him that gave her an exquisite pain.

“If you had been dragged down,” he answered simply, “my love would have been killed.  I know something of the horrors you have been through, as though I had suffered them myself.  They might have dragged down another woman, Honora.  But they have strangely ennobled you.”

She drew her hand away.

“No,” she said, “I do not deserve happiness.  It cannot be my destiny.”

“Destiny,” he repeated.  “Destiny is a thing not understandable by finite minds.  It is not necessarily continued tragedy and waste, of that I am certain.  Only a little thought is required, it seems to me, to assure us that we cannot be the judges of our own punishment on this earth.  And of another world we know nothing.  It cannot be any one’s destiny to throw away a life while still something may be made of it.  You would be throwing your life away here.  That no other woman is possible, or ever can be possible, for me should be a consideration with you, Honora.  What I ask of you is a sacrifice—­will you make me happy?”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Peter, do you care so much as that?  If—­if I could be sure that I were doing it for you!  If in spite—­of all that has happened to me, I could be doing something for you—!”

He stooped and kissed her.

“You can if you will,” he said.

PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

      Best way is to leave ’em alone.  Don’t dandle ’em (babies)
      Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted
      Comparisons, as Shakespeare said, are odorous
      Constitutionally honest
      Conversation was a mockery
      Every one, man or woman, has the right to happiness
      Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact
      Fetters of love
      Happy the people whose annals are blank in history’s book
      He has always been too honest to make a great deal of money
      Her words of comfort were as few as her silent deeds were many
      How can you talk of things other people have and not want them
      Immutable love in a changing, heedless, selfish world
      Intense longing is always followed by disappointment
      Little better than a gambling place (Stock Exchange)
      No reason why we should suffer all our lives for a mistake
      Often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure
      Providence is accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact
      Regarding favourable impressions with profound suspicion
      Resented the implication of possession
      Rocks to which one might cling, successful or failing
      Self-torture is human
      She had never