“Then—something came over me. It all went flat. Then, you came and told me Lucian was coming back—and—and—I found out in another way, that if—if he brought back my feelings—I could and I would fight it all through—and nothing would stand against me. But oh—the feelings are all gone. I’ve forgotten him! So my feelings can’t be worth much, and—and there doesn’t seem enough to fight about—to give it all up and condemn myself and my sisters to a bad, miserable life—oh, so many degradations!”
“Lucian knows now how deeply he offended you,” said Sylvester, swerving a little from his point, so much did he care what her feelings were.
“It’s not that. It is that I have changed. But I—I couldn’t wrong him. I couldn’t marry him for—for an establishment!”
The last word burst out as if in quotation marks, with a passionate accent of self-contempt and scorn.
“What I want to say is,” said Sylvester, “don’t wrong yourself. Listen!—I believe in counsels of perfection. I don’t judge all the women who have married as you say, and been good and saint-like and self-denying, for other people’s sake. But you—you hear another Voice. Even for your sisters’ sake—listen to it.”
Amethyst turned away, and hid her face against the back of her chair. She was not crying,—but a sense of being overwhelmed was coming upon her. The situation was beginning to make itself felt.
“When one has no feelings,” she said, after a minute—“neither religious nor any others—there is nothing left but doing right.”
“There is that left,” he answered, coming nearer. Another silence, then she faltered out—
“Of course—I haven’t got my eyes shut. I do know all you mean—what marrying would be.—You think I couldn’t expect to be helped to be good afterwards—doing it against my instincts. You think it would be so wrong, that it’s worth turning life upside down to stop it—worth what it will be like, not to do it?”
“So wrong,” said Sylvester, kneeling beside her chair, “that I would rather see you die than do it.”