"and even when it is so, fidelity, in the sense that you mean it, is a relative thing."
"Relative to what, may I ask?"
"To a life-long and tender devotion to wife and children, a devotion in no way disturbed by a possible or rare infidelity, as you call it. Be just, madame,—perfect, are your own men perfect? And you must remember that you have divorce, and in this way legalize the expression of what is after all human nature."
"I think that you are saying dreadful things," was Margaret's comment.
Curatulo bowed and shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
"I regret, madame, that they seem to you so," he said. "I cannot help thinking that you are not altogether just."
"But I am just beyond and above everything else," said Margaret, in her decided way; and in her decision, her almost helpless honesty, the rigidity, and what seemed to Curatulo the crudity, of her puritan vision, she stood for him as an incorruptible type of the sort of American woman who is not often met in the social world of Europe. Her dress, made of handsome materials, but a little rigid, a little unfashionable, emphasized her inflexibility and lack of sensuous charm.
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