Don't you think you have gone far enough with it?
The scandal has reached down here.
What it is in Chicago I don't know, but it can't be a secret.
That can't help the house in business there.
It certainly can't help you.
The whole thing has gone on so long that you have injured your prospects all around, and yet you continue.
Why do you?"
"I suppose because I love her," Lester replied.
"You can't be serious in that," said his father.
"If you had loved her, you'd have married her in the first place.
Surely you wouldn't take a woman and live with her as you have with this woman for years, disgracing her and yourself, and still claim that you love her.
You may have a passion for her, but it isn't love."
"How do you know I haven't married her?" inquired Lester coolly.
He wanted to see how his father would take to that idea.
"You're not serious!"
The old gentleman propped himself up on his arms and looked at him.
"No, I'm not," replied Lester, "but I might be.
I might marry her."
"Impossible!" exclaimed his father vigorously. "I can't believe it.
I can't believe a man of your intelligence would do a thing like that, Lester.
Where is your judgment?
Why, you've lived in open adultery with her for years, and now you talk of marrying her.
Why, in heaven's name, if you were going to do anything like that, didn't you do it in the first place?
Disgrace your parents, break your mother's heart, injure the business, become a public scandal, and then marry the cause of it?
I don't believe it."
Old Archibald got up.
"Don't get excited, father," said Lester quickly.
"We won't get anywhere that way.
I say I might marry her.
She's not a bad woman, and I wish you wouldn't talk about her as you do.
You've never seen her. You know nothing about her."
"I know enough," insisted old Archibald, determinedly.
"I know that no good woman would act as she has done.
Why, man, she's after your money.
What else could she want? It's as plain as the nose on your face."
"Father," said Lester, his voice lowering ominously, "why do you talk like that?
You never saw the woman. You wouldn't know her from Adam's off ox.
Louise comes down here and gives an excited report, and you people swallow it whole.
She isn't as bad as you think she is, and I wouldn't use the language you're using about her if I were you.
You're doing a good woman an injustice, and you won't, for some reason, be fair."
"Fair! Fair!" interrupted Archibald.
"Talk about being fair.
Is it fair to me, to your family, to your dead mother to take a woman of the streets and live with her?
Is it—"
"Stop now, father," exclaimed Lester, putting up his hand.
"I warn you. I won't listen to talk like that.
You're talking about the woman that I'm living with—that I may marry.
I love you, but I won't have you saying things that aren't so.
She isn't a woman of the streets.
You know, as well as you know anything, that I wouldn't take up with a woman of that kind.