"The lady's name, my boy," said Caylesham placidly.
This talk was fuel to Blake's flame. It showed him the alternative—the only alternative. (He forgot that suggestion about the Himalayas, which did not, perhaps, deserve to be forgotten.) And the alternative was hideous to him now—hideous in its loss of all nobility, of all the ideal, in its cynically open-eyed acceptance of what was low and base. He would have come to that but for Sibylla. But for him, even Sibylla—Sibylla mated to Grantley—might have come to it also. It was from such a fate as this that they must rescue one another. One wise decision, one courageous stroke, and the thing was done. Very emotional, very exalted, he contrasted with the life Caylesham had led the life he and Sibylla were to lead. Could any man hesitate? With a new impetus and with louder self-applause he turned to his task of persuading Sibylla to the decisive step.
Part of the work was accomplished. Sibylla had cast Grantley out of her heart; she disclaimed and denied both her love and her obligation to him. The harder part remained: that had been half done in her vigil by the baby's cot. But it was ever in danger of being undone again. A cry from the boy's lips, the trustful clinging of his arms from day to day, fought against Blake. Only in those gusts of unnatural feeling, those spasms of repugnance born of her misery, was she in heart away from the child. On these Blake could not rely, nor did he seek to, since to speak of them brought her to instant remorse; but, left to be brooded over in silence, they might help him yet. He trusted his old weapons more—his need of her love and her need to give it. Caylesham's life gave him a new instance and added strength to his argument. He told her of the man, though not the man's name, sketching the life and the state of mind it brought a man to.
"That was my life till you came," he said. "That was what was waiting for me. Am I to go back to that?"
He could attack her on another side too.
"And will you lead the sort of life that man has made women live? Is that fit for you? You can see what it would do to you. You would get like what he's like. You would come down to his level. First you'd share his lies and his intrigues, perforce, while you hated them. Gradually you'd get to hate them less and less: they'd become normal, habitual, easy; they'd become natural. At last you'd see little harm in them. The only harm or hurt at last would be discovery, and you'd get cunning in avoiding that. Think of you and me living that life—aye, till each of us loathed the other as well as loathing ourselves. Is that what you mean?"
"Not that, anyhow not that," she said in a low voice, her eyes wide open and fixed questioningly on him.
"If not that and not the other, what then? Am I to go away?" But he put Caylesham's alternative in no sincerity. He put it to her only that she might thrust it away. If she did not, he would spurn it himself. "And where should I go? Back to where I came from—back to that life?"
She could not tell him to go away, nor to go back to that life. She sat silent, picturing what his life and what her own life would be through all the years, the lifelong years, when even the boy's love would be bitterness, and she could have a friend in nobody because of the great sad secret which would govern all her life.
"I can't tell you. I can't decide to-day."