"
"I am surprised, Mary, that you can encourage her as you did. You cannot
surely uphold the theatre?"
"Well, James, I don't know,--there are theatres and theatres, and actors
and actors; and there have been some very good men actors after all, and
some very bad men ministers, if it comes to that," she added; "and
theatre or no theatre, love's love in spite of all the fathers and
mothers in the world--"
"All right, Mary, I would prefer then that we spoke no more on the
matter for this evening," and James Mesurier turned to his diary, to
record, along with the state of the weather, and the engagements of the
day, the undutiful conduct of Esther, and a painful difference with
his wife.
Strange, that men who have themselves loved and begotten should thus for
a moment imagine that a small social prejudice, or a narrow religious
formula, can break the purpose of a young and vigorous passion. Do they
realise what it is they are proposing to obstruct? This is love--_love_,
my dear sir, at once the mightiest might, and the rightest right in the
universe! This is--Niagara--the Atlantic--the power of the stars--and
the strength of the tides.
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