But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you them because they are things that affect you closely. There was almost from the first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted to be public about our love, I wanted to be open and , and she—hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; I sometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because she wanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in her life,—her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our love was to be a secret , Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to do what I could to please her, and for a time I served that , lied, pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and myself in a net-work of . These are things that poison and consume honest love.  
You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath the respectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricate world of and hidden and passion,—for all passion that wears a mask is perversion—and that thousands of people of our sort are hiding and about their desires, their gratifications, their true relationships. I do not mean the open , for they are mostly honest and people, but the men and women who sin in the shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but and respectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who have looked into it could in some way you now against the repetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, and if I work now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized freedom and independence of women, and greater breadth of toleration, it is because I know in my own person the , the falsity, the bitterness, that can beneath the pretentions of the established code to-day.
 
And I want to tell you too of something altogether unforeseen that happened to us, and that was this, that from the day that passion carried us and we became in the narrower sense of the word lovers, all the wider interests we had in common, our political intentions, our schemes, began to pass out of our . Our situation closed upon us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more intense had our attention by the feet, and we used our wings no more. I do not think that we even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of one another. Because, I tell you, there is no light upon kiss or embrace that is not done with pride. I do not know why it should be so, but people of our race and quality are a little ashamed of gratification in love. Always we seem in my memory to have been whispering with flushed cheeks, and discussing interminably—situation. Had something betrayed us, might something betray, was this or that cunning? Had we perhaps left a footmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who was as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of my clothes with our secret in his hand? Between myself and the clear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work of precautions spread like a veil.
 
And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive . The figure of Justin comes back to me. It is a curious thing that in spite of our bitter and the we were to feel for one another, there has always been, and there now in my thought of him, a certain , a regret at our , a quality of . His broad face, which the common impression and the caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a or heavy face at all. It is no doubt , after the fashion of an eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but there is a minute of the brows which combines with that queer of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the white of his eyes, to give something faintly and pitiful to his expression, an effect enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. They are gentle eyes; it is absurd to suppose them the eyes of a violently forceful man. And indeed they do not Justin. It is not by or pressure that his wealth and power have been ; it is by the sheer detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer big brain of his there is something of the calculating boy and not a little of the chess champion; he has a kind of financial gift, he must be rich, and grows richer. What else is there for him to do? How many times have I not tried to glance carelessly at his face and that look in his eyes, and ask myself was that his usual look, or was it lit by an jealousy? Did he perhaps begin to suspect? I had become a visitor in the house, he might well be jealous of such favors as she showed me, for with him she talked but little and shared no thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured by an habituated despair. They were polite and friendly with one another....
 
I tried a hundred sophistications of my treachery to him. I assured myself that a modern woman is mistress and owner of herself; no , and so . But he did not think so, and neither she nor I were behaving as though we thought so. In innumerable little things we were doing our best tacitly to him. And so you see me shaking hands with this man, affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, staying in his house, eating his food and drinking his wine, that I might be the nearer to his wife. It is not the first time that has been done in the world, there are esoteric codes to all I did; I perceive there are types of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the very reason of their excitement. But we Strattons are honest people, there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us; never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will be when you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reach you too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go through with it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, follow the honor that is still left to you—and if you can, come out of the ....
 
It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, but Rachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressed girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now with a faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed. I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everything between us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end.
 
I told Mary I must cease my visits to the . I tried to make her feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explains away so much," she said. "If you stop going there—everyone will talk. Everything will swing round—and point here."
 
"Rachel!" I protested.
 
"No," she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghang............