It was he who stood now staring and stammering.
“You would let your religion come between us—separate us?”
“Oh, Maryon—my religion is me—It is what I feel myself—it is deep in me. One cannot escape from what one has felt and believed all one’s life.”
“But the thing is impossible,” he cried wildly, fiercely; “I cannot lose you. You must leave your religion—What does a good woman want with religion?—Our Love shall be your religion—I will be your religion—I will never let you go.”
“Hush, Marie, you don’t know what you are saying,” she said gently. “We must part. I can never, never marry you.”
And despite her gentleness she stood like rock against the battery of his words, though he reasoned, pleaded, beguiled, even cursed, in his pain and wrath. Her heart turned to water, she was sick with love and pity for him, but through all she clung to her faith as a sailor might cling to a rock in a blinding, wrecking storm. For nothing he could say could she contemplate treachery to her people, her life-long principles, her God. Not so does the Catholic Church train its daughter against the hour of temptation.
When at last in the bitter madness of defeat and loss he caught and crushed her in his arms, kissing her savagely, she stayed silent, too proud to struggle in those iron arms, but cold, cold as snow; until at last the cold purity of her penetrated him like a lance of ice, piercing his heart.
“Forgive me!—forgive me, Diane—I am a brute—I am mad!” he muttered, and stumbled away into the night.
After a night of drenching rain, the camp out at the Carissima Mine lay sparkling in the morning sunshine. It was five a.m. with the promise of a golden day. Birds were twittering in tree and bush and wet leaves flickered and twinkled like diamonds, throwing off a myriad points of light. From the thatched roofs of the half dozen large huts in the clearing, steam arose, mingling with the blue spirals from newly kindled fires.