[Illustration: "If it were your friend, what advice would you give her?"]
"I would bid her tell the man who had loved her,--that is, if he were noble, good, and great,--that she found herself to be unfit to be his wife; and then I would bid her ask his pardon humbly on her knees." As she said this, she sank before him on to the floor, and looked up into his face with an expression of sad contrition which almost drew him from his purposed firmness.
He had purposed to be firm,--to yield to her in nothing, resolving to treat all that she might say as the hallucination of a sickened imagination,--as the effect of absolute want of health, for which some change in her mode of life would be the best cure. She might bid him begone in what language she would. He knew well that such was her intention. But he would not allow a word coming from her in such a way to disturb arrangements made for the happiness of their joint lives. As a loving husband would treat a wife, who, in some exceptionable moment of a melancholy malady, should declare herself unable to remain longer in her home, so would he treat her. As for accepting what she might say as his dismissal, he would as soon think of taking the fruit-trees from the southern wall because the sun sometimes shines from the north. He could not treat either his interests or hers so lightly as that.

"I would bid her tell the good and noble man who loved her that she found herself unfit to be his wife; and then I would bid her ask his pardon humbly on her knees." And Alice sank before him to the floor, and looked up into his face with sad contrition.
He had intended to yield to her in nothing, resolving to treat all that she might say as hallucination - as the effect of lack of health, for which some change in her mode of life would be the best cure. He knew what she intended. But he would not allow a word she said to disturb arrangements made for their joint happiness. He would treat her as a loving husband would treat a wife who was in the grip of a melancholy malady.
