"If, after we had been married, I had found out that you had concealed
something from me, do you think that I should have loved you less?"
"I do not think you would, Madaline; but the present case is
different--entirely different; it is not for my own sake, but for the
honor of my race. Better a thousand times that my name should die out
than that upon it there should be the stain of crime!"
"But, Norman--this is a weak argument, I know--a woman's
argument--still, listen to it, love--who would know my secret if it were
well kept?"
"None; but I should know it," he replied, "and that would be more than
sufficient. Better for all the world to know than for me. I would not
keep such a secret. I could not. It would hang over my head like a drawn
sword, and some day the sword would fall. My children, should Heaven
send any to me, might grow up, and then, in the height of some social or
political struggle, when man often repeats against his fellow man all
that he knows of the vilest and the worst, there might be thrown into
their faces the fact that they were descended from a felon. It must not
be; a broken heart is hard to bear--injured honor is perhaps harder.
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