Chairo's chin buried itself deeper in his breast, but he controlled the impulse to protest. Indeed, there was a note in Lydia's voice that brought a lump into his throat. He could not have protested had he dared.
Iréné had sent for a glass of water; Lydia partook of it, and then, raising her voice, proceeded:
"Ever since I was restored to my home I have kept silence, because I felt—and I was so advised—that a moment would come when I should be better understood than at a time when the public mind was inflamed by revolution and bloodshed. As to these things, I have cruelly felt the extent to which I was the occasion of them, but I ask you to consider whether indeed I was the cause. And I ask you, too, not to confuse the question raised by the cult of Demeter with those other questions for which the rebels stood. In these last I have had no share and to them I shall not again refer. They have no part in the question you have to decide. To give them a part would be to do me a great wrong.
"And as regards the cult of Demeter, there is no devouter daughter of the cult than I; and that I should stand to-day, arrayed in the eyes of some of you against the cult, chokes my utterance and fills my eyes with tears. Nor should I have had strength to plead my cause with you to-day had I not come to you leaning on one of Demeter's worthiest votaries."
Here Lydia put her hand on Iréné's shoulder, and Iréné looked into her face and smiled.
"For in my heart there is a reverence for Demeter so profound that when the mission was tendered to me, I felt that a cubit had been added to my stature; I felt a strength grow in me to make what sacrifice was needful, and as day passed day the sacrifice grew less and my strength grew more.
"But oh, fellow-worshippers of Demeter," and she looked here at the part of the hall where the irreconcilables had grouped themselves, "do not frown on me when I say that there was also in my heart another reverence, another strength, of which I was not sufficiently aware; and in your faith in the cult you serve, do not blind yourself to that other cult to which, whether we will or no, we are all—yes, all—subject. We may harden our hearts to it, we may bring it as a sacrifice upon your altar, but if it has once grown deep enough, it overpowers all the rest—I am not ashamed to say it here—before you who ask mercy for Chairo and you who ask for his destruction, I am not ashamed to publish it to all the world—stronger than reverence for Demeter, stronger than the unutterable honor of the Demetrian mission—is the love of a woman for a man."
She paused; there was no applause, but the breathless silence that reigned bore a higher tribute to the impression made than any spoken word or gesture.
"And when love came it brought with it a sense of duty to another, so that I no longer stood merely between Demeter and my love, I stood also between Demeter and Chairo"—a loud murmur of disapproval greeted these words. Lydia, however, went bravely on. "But I looked with suspicion upon an argument that so favored my own inclination, and believing duty to lie in resistance to inclination rather than in consent to it, I strangled my love, and with a pride in my own sacrifice that was false and bad I accepted the mission."
Again a murmur of disapproval filled the hall. This time Lydia acknowledged it by turning to the corner whence it came.