"Then--then," she said very deliberately, "do this for me."
She raised her muff to hide the face that flamed scarlet. He took one step toward her, paused, struggled for mastery of himself. He remembered now that the principle--the principle that had guided him in the conduct of his office, required that he must make his decisions slowly, calmly, impersonally, with the cold deliberation of the law he was there to impersonate. And here was the woman he loved, the woman whom he had longed to make his wife, the wife who could crown his success--here, at last, ready to say the word she had so long refused to say--the word he had so long wished to hear.
"Elizabeth," he said simply, "you know how I have loved you, how I love you now. This may not be the time or the place for that--I do not wish to take an advantage of you--but you do not know some other things. I have never felt at all worthy of you. I do not now, but I have felt that I could at least offer you a clean hand and a clean heart. I have tried in this office, with all its responsibilities, to do my duty without fear or favor; thus far I have done so. It has been my pride that nothing has swerved me from the path of that plain duty. I have consoled myself ever since I knew I loved you--and that was long before I dared to tell you--that I could at least go to you with that record. And now you ask me to stultify myself, to give all that up! It is hard--too hard!" He turned away. "I don't suppose I make it clear. Perhaps it seems a little thing to you. To me it is a big thing; it is all I have."
Elizabeth was conscious for an instant of nothing but a gratitude to him for turning away. She pressed her muff against her face; the soft fur, a little cold, was comforting to her hot cheeks. She felt a humiliation now that she feared she never could survive; she felt a regret, too, that she had ever let the situation take this personal and intimate turn. For an instant she was disposed to blame Eades, but she was too just for that; she knew that she alone was to blame; she remembered that it was this very appeal she had come to make, and she contemned herself--despised herself. And then in a desperate effort to regain her self-respect, she tried to change the trend of the argument, to restore it to the academic, the impersonal, to struggle back to the other plane with him, and she said:
"If it could do any good! If I could see what good it does!"
"What!" he exclaimed, turning to her. "What good? What good does any of my work do?"
"I'm sure I don't know." As she said this, she looked up at him, met his eye with a boldness she despised in herself. Down in her heart she was conscious of a self-abasement that was almost complete; she realized the histrionic in her attitude, and in this feeling, determined now to brave it out; she added bitterly: "None, I should say."
"None!" He repeated the word, aghast. "None! Do you say that all this work I have been doing for the betterment, the purification of society does no good?"
"No good," she said; "it does no good; it only makes more suffering in the world." And she thought of all she was just then suffering.
"Where--" he could not catch his breath--"where did you get that idea?"