Pritchard stared at him. There was something amazing about this young man's attitude, something which he could not wholly grasp. He could see, too, that Tavernake's words were so few simply because he was trembling under the influence of an immense passion.
“If you won't listen,” Pritchard declared, slowly, “I can't talk. Still, you've got common sense, I take it. You've the ordinary powers of judging between right and wrong, and knowing when a man or a woman's honest. I want to save you—”
“Silence!” Tavernake exclaimed. “Look here, Pritchard,” he went on, breathing a little more naturally now, “you came here meaning to do the right thing—I know that. You're all right, only you don't understand. You don't understand the sort of person I am. I am twenty-four years old, I have worked for my own living up here in London since I was twelve. I was a man, so far as work and independence went, at fifteen. Since then I have had my shoulder to the wheel; I have lived on nothing; I have made a little money where it didn't seem possible. I have worried my way into posts which it seemed that no one could think of giving me, but all the time I have lived in a little corner of the world—like that.”
His finger suddenly described a circle in the air.
“You don't understand—you can't,” he went on, “but there it is. I never spoke to a woman until I spoke to Beatrice. Chance made me her friend. I began to understand the outside of some of those things which I had never even dreamed of before. She set me right in many ways. I began to read, think, absorb little bits of the real world. It was all wonderful. Then Elizabeth came. I met her, too, by accident—she came to my office for a house—Elizabeth!”
Pritchard found something almost pathetic in the sudden dropping of Tavernake's voice, the softening of his face.
“I don't know how to talk about these things,” Tavernake said, simply. “There's a literature that's reached from before the Bible to now, full of nothing else. It's all as old as the hills. I suppose I am about the only sane man in this city who knew nothing of it; but I did know nothing of it, and she was the first woman. Now you understand. I can't hear a word against her—I won't! She may be what you say. If so, she's got to tell me so herself!”
“You mean that you are going to believe any story she likes to put up?”
“I mean that I am going to her,” Tavernake answered, “and I have no idea in the world what will happen—whether I shall believe her or not. I can see what you think of me,” he went on, becoming a little more himself as the stress of unaccustomed speech passed him by. “I will tell you something that will show you that I realize a good deal. I know the difference between Beatrice and Elizabeth. Less than a week ago, I asked Beatrice to marry me. It was the only way I could think of, the only way I could kill the fever.”
“And Beatrice?” Pritchard asked, curiously.