Nothing is more common than for the conscience half unconsciously to
assume that a heroic self-sacrifice has been of so great efficacy that
even the conditions which made it right are thereby altered. Without
realizing it, Helen's mental attitude was that in giving up Herman's
love and bringing about his marriage to Ninitta that his honor might be
unstained, she had accomplished a self-denial so tremendous that even
the need of making it was thereby destroyed. The idea was paradoxical,
but that a proposition is paradoxical is no obstacle to its being held
firmly by the feminine mind.
But by coming home Helen had also been put in a position where she
could not avoid seeing something of Herman's married life, and it was
at once impossible for her to help perceiving that it was a failure, or
to evade the conclusion that if it were a failure she was to blame for
the part she had taken in bringing it about. It is always dangerous to
judge of actions by their results, since by so doing one refers them to
the code of expediency rather than to that of ethics. Helen was not
prepared to pronounce her old decision wrong; but the feeling that her
renunciation had been vain forced itself more and more strongly upon
her.
She was losing sight of her conviction that the need of doing what one
felt to be right was in itself so imperative that no course of action
could be wrong which was based upon this principle.
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