and bear it for you. I will never live to have people pointing at me and saying, 'That is the girl Paul Vasher loves, and who loves him—the married man. It is on her account that he does not live with his wife.' Do you think that I could bear it? If you will not go back to her, I will leave Silverbridge and go far away, where the prying finger of scandal cannot reach me."
"And why should you? Who will know the story?"
"Every one. Do you think she will keep silence?"
"There can be no possible reproach to you in it."
"None if you are with her, much if you are apart. She who is known to stand between husband and wife receives but scant mercy from the world."
"Ask me something less hard," he says; and the veins in his forehead stand out like cords. "Even for you I cannot do this. Set me some task that body and soul do not utterly forbid. I am not mad, Nell; but I know my own strength, and I could not do it. What do you think I am made of, that I could see her fill your place, bear your name, stand by my side usurping your rights—she! Do you think I could ever let my eyes rest on her false face, without yours rising up before me? ever hear her called Mrs. Vasher, without longing to strike to earth the man that said it? ever endure to so much as touch her hand, when I was wearying, aching after you?—you think that I could do all this and live? Sooner or later I should break down—and———
"Paul," I say, and my voice is so hushed that I can scarcely hear it," do you not see that there is no safety for either you or me if you are not by the side of your wife! For the sake of all the love you bore me, in recompense for all the misery you have brought me, I ask this one mercy of you! Live with her as a stranger, if you will; but, in the eyes of the world, be man and wife."
A shamed streak of red comes into my cheek as I speak; then
