Hough looked at the speaker impotently. "You misunderstood me, Chad, if you thought I was trying to keep you from your due, or from anything which would really make for your happiness. I was simply trying to prevent something I feel morally certain you'll regret. Because one isn't entirely happy is no adequate reason why he should make himself more unhappy. I can't say any more than I've already said; there's nothing more to say. My best reason for disapproving your contemplated action I gave you first, and you've not considered it at all. It's the injustice you do to a girl who doesn't realize what she is doing. With your disposition, Chad, you'd take away from her something which neither God nor man can ever give her back--her trust in life."
Sidwell's long fingers restlessly twirled the glass before him. The remainder of the untouched beer was now as so much stagnant water.
"If I don't undeceive her someone else will," he said. "It's inevitable. She'll have to adjust herself to things as they are, as we all have to do."
Hough made a motion of deprecation.
"Miss Baker is no longer a child," continued Sidwell. "If you've studied her as you say you've done, you've discovered that she has very definite ideas of her own. It's true that I haven't known her long, but she has had an opportunity to know me well such as no one else has ever had, not even you. No one can say that she is leaping in the dark. Time and time again, at every opportunity, I have stripped my very soul bare for her observation. The thing has not been easy for me; indeed, I know of nothing I could have done that would have been more difficult. Though the present instance seems to give the statement the lie, I am not easily confidential, my friend. I have had a definite object in doing as I have done with Miss Baker. I am trying, as I never tried before in my life, to get in touch with her--as I'll never try again, no matter how the effort results, to get in touch with a person. She knows the good and bad of me from A to Z. She knows the life I lead, the kind of people who make up that life, their aims, their amusements, their standards, social and moral, as thoroughly as I can make her know them. I have taken her everywhere, shown her every phase of my surroundings. For once in my life at least, Hough, I have been absolutely what I am,--absolutely frank. Farther than that I cannot go. I am not my brothers keeper. She is an individual in a world of individuals; a free agent, mental, moral, and physical. The decision of her future actions, the choice she makes of her future life, must of necessity rest with her. For some reason I cannot point to a definite explanation and say this or that is why she is attractive to me. She seems to offer the solution of a want I feel. No system of logic can convince me that, after having been honest as I have been with her, if she of her own free will consents to be my wife, I have not a moral right to make her so."