Why! Oh! Why is it that ugliness, ridicule, and baseness must fall across my path." On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke to each other as if the earth had fallen away from under their feet.
"Are you grieving for your dignity?
He was a mediocre soul and could have given you but an unworthy existence." She did not even smile at those words, but, superb, as if lifting a corner of the veil, she turned on him slowly.
"And do you imagine I would have devoted myself to him for such a purpose! Don't you know that reparation was due to him from me?
A sacred debt--a fine duty.

To redeem him would not have been in my power--I know it.

But he was blameless, and it was for me to come forward.

Don't you see that in the eyes of the world nothing could have rehabilitated him so completely as his marriage with me?
No word of evil could be whispered of him after I had given him my hand.

As to giving myself up to anything less than the shaping of a man's destiny--if I thought I could do it I would abhor myself.