'Be a man and conquer your love,--as I will.Get it under your feet and press it to death.Tell yourself that it is shameful and must be abandoned.That you, Arthur Fletcher, should marry the widow of that man,--the woman that he had thrust so far into the mire that she can never again be clean;--you, the chosen one, the bright star among us all;--you, whose wife should be the fairest, the purest, the tenderest of us all, a flower that has yet been hardly breathed on.While I--Arthur,' she said, 'Iknow my duty better than that.I will not seek an escape from my punishment in that way,--nor will I allow you to destroy yourself.You have my word as a woman that it shall not be so.
Now I do not mind your knowing whether I love you or no.' He stood silent before her, not able for the moment to go on with his prayer.'And now,' she said, 'God bless you, and give you some fair and happy wife.And, Arthur, do not come again to me.
If you will let it be so, I shall have delight in seeing you;--but not if you come as you have come now.And, Arthur, spare me with papa.Do not let him think that it is all my fault that Icannot do the thing that he wishes.' Then she left the room before he could say another word to her.
But it was all her fault.No;--in that direction he could not spare her.It must be told to her father, though he doubted his own power of describing all that had been said.'Do not come again to me,' she had said.At the moment he had been left speechless; but if there was one thing fixed in his mind, it was the determination to come again.He was sure now, not only of love that might have sufficed,--but of hot, passionate love.
She had told him that her heart had beat at his footsteps, and that she had trembled as she listened to his voice,--and yet she had expected that he would not come again! But there was a violence of decision about the woman which made him dread that he might still come in vain.She was so warped from herself by the conviction of her great mistake, so prone to take shame to herself for her own error, so keenly alive to the degradation to which she had been submitted, that it might yet be impossible to teach her that, though her husband had been vile and she mistaken, yet she had not been soiled by his baseness.
He went at once to the old barrister's chambers and told him the result of the meeting.'She is still a fool,' said the father, not understanding at second-hand the depths of his daughter's feeling.
'No, sir,--not that.She felt herself degraded by his degradation.If it be possible we must save her from that.'
'She did degrade herself.'
'Not as she means it.She is not degraded in my eyes.'
'Why should she not take the only means in her power of rescuing herself and rescuing us all from the evil that she did? She owes it you, me, and to her brother.'
'I would hardly wish her to come to me in payment of such a debt.'
'There is no room left,' said Mr Wharton angrily, 'for soft sentimentality.Well;--she must take her bed as she makes it.
It is very hard on me, I know.Considering what she used to be, it is marvellous to me that she should have so little idea left of doing her duty to others.'
Arthur Fletcher found that the barrister was at the moment too angry to hear reason, or to be made to understand anything of the feelings of mixed love and admiration with which he was animated at the moment.He was obliged therefore to content himself with assuring the father that he did not intend to give up the pursuit of his daughter.
