Conscience drew back a step and her hands came up to her bosom as she regarded him, at first with unbelief, and then with an anger that made her seem an incarnation of warring principle.
"I sought the wrong ally," was all she said, but she said it with such a cold ring of contempt that the man's answer broke out almost fiercely.
"You don't know it, Conscience, but you are still the deluded daughter of men who burned witches in the name of God; people who could sing psalms through their noses, but couldn't see beyond them; men who exalted a dreary bigotry above all else. I inherited traditions as well as you. My fathers have committed homicide on the field of honor and put woman on a pedestal. They made of her a being, half-angel and half-toy, but I refuse to be bound by their outworn ideas.
"Nowadays we prate less priggishly about honor because it is no longer a word with a single meaning." He paused a moment, then went on in a climax of vehemence. "From this moment on your New England code and my inherited chivalry may be hanged on the same gibbet! This revered temple of your marriage is just as sacred to me as a joss house—and I mean to invade it—and break its false idols—if I can!"
Conscience stood for a brief space with her hands clenched on the rail that guarded the edge of the float. She was almost hypnotically conscious of his eyes burning with a sort of wildness into her own, but when she spoke it was in a manner regally unafraid—even disdainful.
"You are quite welcome to break them if you can," she declared, and the next moment he saw her going with a superbly firm carriage up the path—and found himself alone and tremendously shaken.
CHAPTER XXVI
For the best part of an hour Stuart sat confusedly looking out across the cove. Then with the wish for some stimulating fillip he stripped and plunged into the sobering coolness of the water. Even after that he did not return to the house, but struck out aimlessly across the hills with little realization of direction and small selection of course. Once or twice a blackberry trailer caught his foot and he lurched heavily, recovering himself with difficulty.