“And the hypocrite can ask!—Here.”
“Here!—what?”
“You try to ignore it, but your pale face betrays your guilt, and under the pangs of awakened conscience even the hardened mask of the sceptic must blush. Quite lately I have seen you in all the naked hideousness of your nature, and the depravity of your moral sense. It is monstrous!”
“Explain yourself—or ...” and Leon’s hands were clenched as though he longed to choke some one.
“By all means. Is your connection with the mistress of this house any secret, as well as your treacherous betrayal of the most saintly, pure, and angelic woman that God ever sent into this world? However, your conduct up to this time, though a breach of every law, human or divine, has not been grossly scandalous. Though morally criminal, you have not yet fallen in the scale of wickedness to the level where it is hard to distinguish a man from a devil.”
“Pray describe to me that depth of vileness in which I might be taken for one of your friends,” said Leon, again lending his fury the guise of an acrid humour which, like absinthe, embitters and intoxicates a man while it makes him laugh.
“Why do you ask me to tell you things you full well know? But, to be sure, there are reprobate natures which like to have the mirror held up to them, and revel in the hideousness of their own image, like apes who gaze at their reflection in a puddle.”
“No more of this coarse rigmarole and sham rhetoric! Speak plainly, state facts, call things by their names; we want no special pleading and parliamentary rhodomontade; I am sick of this endless parade of words, and confusion of divine laws with human subterfuge.”
“Oh, very well,—then I will speak plainly. After reducing my unfortunate sister to the state in which she now lies, any man, however wicked, might respect her weakness, if not her innocence. In every dying human creature there is something of the angel. You have not respected even that; while your saintly victim is lying on her death-bed, soothed perhaps by your lies, and believing you less base than you really are, you can meet your paramour in the Incroyable room. Cheating one, and making love to the other; killing one by inches, and giving the other the affection due to your wife! Well, I can understand this, Leon. I can understand falsehood and guilty passion.—What I cannot understand, because it seems to me baseness too utter for humanity; is that both crimes should be committed under the same roof. Two such deeds of infamy are too much at the same time and place.”
Leon, before his accuser had ended his diatribe, had broken out into a frank fit of scornful laughter which seemed to have dissipated his indignation.