She knew as much
yesterday and had known it all along. Why, if she possessed such
strength of character, had she allowed matters to go so far when she
could easily have interrupted the course of events at an earlier period?
He did not admit that she perhaps loved him so much as to have been
carried away by her passion until she found herself on the point of
doing him an injury by marrying him, and that her love was strong enough
to induce her to sacrifice herself at the critical moment. Though he
loved her much he did not believe her to be heroic in any way. On the
contrary, he said to himself that if she were sincere, and if her love
were at all like his own, she would let no obstacle stand in the way of
it. To him, the test of love must be its utter recklessness. He could
not believe that a still better test may be, and is, the constant
forethought for the object of love, and the determination to protect
that object from all danger in the present and from all suffering in the
future, no matter at what cost.
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