Eye to eye they watched each other, and at the sound of his deep, tender, quivering voice recollection smote hard upon her heart, and a vague, shivering pain drove the blood from her face, but she fought the suggestion.
"You are unknown to me."
"I am Vernon Pembroke Temple, and you are Nona, my wife! My Nona—my own wife——"
Words failed him, and he held out his arms. She recoiled, throwing up her hands with a gesture of loathing, and stood as if turned to stone, so strangely hard was a face where eyes kindled and burned with the pent hatred and scorn of long years of sore trial.
"You had not sins enough to sink your soul without adding hypocrisy? A preacher! A priest! Cowardice, perjury, moral leprosy, skulking under a long cloak as black as what is left of your vile heart!"
Each word fell like a red-hot flail, but he did not wince, and neither father nor mother heard the low wail from the cot where childish arms covered a face white with horror.
"You think, you believe I intentionally and pre-meditatedly deserted you, and in your ignorance of facts you certainly had cause to despise me, but——"
"Think—believe! As if it were possible to doubt the villainy planned! The crime you so carefully committed against a mere child, knowing she was a helpless victim, believing she could never redress her awful wrongs. As if you had set a trap and caught an innocent, happy bird, and then broken its wings and tossed it to screaming hawks! Coward—coward as you always were—how dare you face me?"
"Nona, dear Nona—" He put out his hand appealingly, but she struck it aside with stinging force, and stepped backward.
"Out of my sight, or I call the police."