I merely mean that you shall never again bring publicity and shame upon your wife--even though now, mercifully enough, she has not the faintest idea that you are what a complacent law calls her husband." A slow blaze lighted up his eyes, and he got up from his chair.
"You decadent little beast!" he said slowly, "do you suppose that the dirty accident of your intrusion into an honest man's life could dissolve the divine compact of wedlock?
Soil it--yes; besmirch it, render it superficially unclean, unfit, nauseous--yes.

But neither you nor your vile code nor the imbecile law you invoked to legalise the situation really ever deprived me of my irrevocable status and responsibility.

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