"God in heaven, Anne," he cried, aghast and incredulous. "Do you know what you are saying? Do you think I would drag you down, despoil you—"
"Oh, you would be honest enough to marry me—then," she cried out bitterly. "Your sense of honour would attend to all that. You—"
"Stop!" he commanded, standing over her as she shrank back against the wall. "Do you think that I love you so little that I could—Love? Is that the kind of love that you have been extolling to the skies?"
She covered her flaming face with her hands. "Forgive me, forgive me!" she murmured, brokenly. "I am so ashamed of myself."
He was profoundly moved. A great pity for her swept through him. "I shall not come again," he said hoarsely. "I will be fair. You are right. You see more clearly than I can see. I must not come to you again unless I come to ask you to be my wife. You are right. We would go mad with—"
"Listen to me, Braden," she interrupted in a strangely quiet manner. "I shall never ask you to come to me. If you want me you must ask me to come to you. I will come. But you are to impose no conditions. You must leave me to fight out my own battle. My love is so great, so honest, so strong that it will triumph over everything else. Listen! Let me say this to you before I send you away from me to-day. Love is relentless. It wrecks homes, it sends men to the gallows and women to the madhouse. It makes drunkards, suicides and murderers of noble men and women. It causes men and women to abandon homes, children, honour—and all the things that should be dear to them. It impoverishes, corrupts and—defiles. It makes cowards of brave men and brave men of cowards. The thing we call love has a thousand parts. It has purity, nobility, grandeur, greed, envy, lust—everything. You have heard of good women abandoning good husbands for bad lovers. You have heard of good mothers giving up the children they worship. You have heard of women and men murdering husbands and wives in order to remove obstacles from the path of love. One woman whom we both know recently gave up wealth, position, honour, children,—everything,—to go down into poverty and disgrace with the man she loved. You know who I mean. She did it because she could not help herself. Opposed to the evil that love can do, there is always the beautiful, the sweet, the pure,—and it is that kind of love that rules the world. But the other kind is love, just the same, and while it does not govern the world, it is none the less imperial. What I want to say to you is this: while love may govern the world, the world cannot govern love. You cannot govern this love you have for me, although you may control it. Nor can I destroy the love I have for you. I may not deserve your love, but I have it and you cannot take it away from me. Some other woman may rob me of it, perhaps, but you cannot do it, my friend. I will wait for you to come and get me, Braden. Now, go,—please go,—and do not come here again until—" she smiled faintly.
He lowered his head. "I will not come again, Anne," he said huskily.
She did not follow him to the door.