"I'm coming to that presently. First, you must take this money."
"I will not, the idea."
"I'll give you another cheque to-morrow morning. That's settled. Now..."
"Oh, please, please don't ask me. Well, if—if I do, I won't spend the money."
"Please yourself about that; and now for the other." He paused, and then again seizing her by the shoulders while the glow in his eyes became a leaping flame, went on: "We love each other, Stara, and love such as ours must be satisfied. What do conventions matter to you and me; leave them to the weak fools whose lives they trammel. Belong to me you shall, not, as you think, by paltry deceit, but openly, for the whole world to see. It's marriage I offer you, not dishonour."
Stara looked up at him bewildered.
"Are you mad, Hector, your wife?"
"What is she to me—what is anything to me? Stara, in the whole world I can see but one thing now, you, and you I swear to have."
"I don't understand. You're married; nothing can alter that. Oh, why talk about impossibilities?"
"There's nothing impossible to me. There never was from the time you told me you loved me. Listen and I'll tell you what I mean to do. To-morrow I shall see her—I will call her 'my wife' no longer, Stara—and I'll tell her it's you I love and not her. I'll say, too, I've come to break with her, that the past is finished and a new life begun. Oh, I've thought it all out; the thing's as good as done now."