Why, your own people say so, don't they ?" "My own people?
The people I suppose you mean don't say so.

I took a vow never to marry--there were even more stringent terms--but that's enough." "Well ?" "A vow," continued Stafford, "that you won't marry till you want to is not the same as a vow never to marry." "No.

I think I could manage the first sort." "The first sort," said Stafford, with a smile, "is nowadays a popular compromise." "I detest compromises.

That's why I liked you." "You're advising me to make one now." "No, I advise you to throw up the whole thing." "That's because you don't believe in anything ?" "Yes, probably." "Suppose you believed all I believe and had done all I had ?" "How do you mean ?" "You believed what a priest believes--in heaven and hell--the gaining God and the losing him--in good and evil.

Supposing you, believing this, had given your life to God, and made your vow to him--had so proclaimed before men, had so lived and worked and striven! Supposing you thought a broken vow was death to your own soul and a trap to the souls of others--a baseness, a treason, a desertion--more cowardly than a soldier's flight--as base as a thief's purloining--meaning to you and those who had trusted you the death of good and the triumph of evil ?" He sat still, but his voice was raised in rapid and intense utterance; he gazed before him with starting eyes.
"All that," he went on, "it meant to me--all that and more--the triumph of the beast in me--passion and desire rampant--man forsaken and God betrayed--my peace forever gone, my honor forever stained.