Should She Have Left Him? — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A DIPLOMATIC MOTHEK. 93 not remain in her present relations without falling under the condemnation of society, Mrs. Courtenay imagined that she had presented the all-powerful argument, for she could not imagine happiness, much less existence, under such a condition. And on this point she pressed her daughter hard, bringing all her artillery to bear with practiced skill and great knowl- edge. Then suddenly up rose Dorothy and con- founded her mother with a simple statement of fact, but, oh, how important and far extending in its consequences. “Mother,” she said, turning and turning her Marriage ring, which she wore to the exclusion of all other rings, that it might be the more con- spicuous, “this is the crisis of my life—the one great crisis of all my life, and I must look to myself selfishly. I know the swift condemning world will say that the course I am pursuing is not moral. But it will say so in ignorance. I refuse to sacrifice myself and my happiness to such ignorance. But whether I do or do not yield to its demand, the result is the same to me. It will ostracize me in either event. So it is for me to choose whether I will accept ostracism without happiness, or ostracism with happiness. I have chosen. That is all.” “But I deny that ostracism will be the result of this misfortune,” exclaimed her mother, and then Weakened her denial by adding, “that is, an’ ostracism we cannot in time overcome.” Dorothy turned to her mother a hallowed face, sanctified by such exquisite tenderness and sublime CONMUG JOO cS (GO)