And whilst despite iron will, obstinacy and pride hot tears would surge to his eyes and sear his aching lids, he suddenly felt a light touch, soft and cool as a snowflake, a tiny hand resting upon his shoulder.
"I trusted you ere this, my lord," she said simply, "trusted and honoured you, mayhap a little feared you as my lord and master. But now, methinks that a great sorrow lies buried in your heart—you choose to call it sin—mayhap it is—that I do not know—I am a woman—soon to be your wife, but never your judge, my lord. And if you have sinned, then you stand nearer to me, who am so far from that perfection which, alas! you see in me. If I feared you before, my lord—meseems that I could love you now."
To Michael Kestyon, with a life of insubordination behind him, a life of debauchery, of loneliness and lovelessness, it seemed as if some unknown Heaven had opened and he had his first vision of what paradise might be. A paradise wherein voices of angels spoke to him of love, and cool white hands, cold as snowflakes yet infinitely gentle, led him towards that open door. That tiny snowflake fell from his shoulder onto his own burning hands, and to his vague astonishment it did not melt at the contact, but lay there cool and soft, mayhap a little trembling, having suddenly changed into some fairy bird.
Michael pressed his hot forehead against it, his eyes and then his lips. His whole soul cried out mutely now in a passionate longing for happiness. Womanly tenderness, womanly pity awaited him in that paradise, the door of which stood open, and if honour long since dormant called out loudly against treachery and against a trick, who shall pronounce judgment on this man, if he had not the strength at this moment to respond to that call?
With his own hands now, with one word spoken by his own lips, he could shut against himself those glorious gates of Heaven, and deliberately turn his back on that brief vision of paradise, and walk once more down that hideous path which leads straight to Hell.
There were but the two courses open to him. The one was to take this trusting, loving woman to his heart, to guard and keep her in happiness and peace, whilst showering on her all the gifts which her weaker nature might desire. He was rich now, would be richer still, he could satisfy her ambition, and by constant love and tender care, he could win her heart and her inner self in time, even though he had won her person by a trick.
The other course was the rugged path to which the inexorable hand of almost barbaric honour pointed relentlessly, to tell her all and to lose her forever. To throw back in his kinsman's face the price of this girl's innocence, and then to go back to that life in London, the drinking booths, the degrading hovels, the propinquity of abandoned reprobates as despicable as he had been himself before he met her.
Pity him if you can!—judge him not if you've never been tempted to chose 'twixt life and living death, 'twixt happiness and degradation, 'twixt the hand of an angel and the gripping tentacles of devils.