"Trilby? where is she?... what's become of her?... She's run away ... oh! She's written me such a letter!... We were to have been married ... at the Embassy ... my mother ... she's been meddling; and that cursed old ass ... that beast ... my uncle!... They've been here! I know all about it.... Why didn't you stick up for her?..."
"I did ... as well as I could. Sandy couldn't stand it, and cut."
"You stuck up for her ... you—why, you agreed with my mother that she oughtn't to marry me—you—you false friend—you.... Why, she's an angel—far too good for the likes of me ... you know she is. As ... as for her social position and all that, what degrading rot! Her father was as much a gentleman as mine ... besides ... what the devil do I care for her father?... it's her I want—her—her—her, I tell you.... I can't live without her.... I must have her back—I must have her back ... do you hear? We were to have lived together at Barbizon ... all our lives—and I was to have painted stunning pictures ... like those other fellows there. Who cares for their social position, I should like to know ... or that of their wives? Damn social position!... we've often said so—over and over again. An artist's life should be away from the world—above all that meanness and paltriness ... all in his work. Social position, indeed! Over and over again we've said what fetid, bestial rot it all was—a thing to make one sick and shut one's self away from the world.... Why say one thing and act another?... Love comes before all—love levels all—love and art ... and beauty—before such beauty as Trilby's rank doesn't exist. Such rank as mine, too! Good God! I'll never paint another stroke till I've got her back ... never, never, I tell you—I can't—I won't!..."
And so the poor boy went on, tearing and raving about in his rampage, knocking over chairs and easels, stammering and shrieking, mad with excitement.
They tried to reason with him, to make him listen, to point out that it was not her social position alone that unfitted her to be his wife and the mother of his children, etc.
It was no good. He grew more and more uncontrollable, became almost unintelligible, he stammered so—a pitiable sight and pitiable to hear.
"Oh! oh! good heavens! are you so precious immaculate, you two, that you should throw stones at poor Trilby! What a shame, what a hideous shame it is that there should be one law for the woman and another for the man!... poor weak women—poor, soft, affectionate things that beasts of men are always running after and pestering and ruining and trampling underfoot.... Oh! oh! it makes me sick—it makes me sick!" And finally he gasped and screamed and fell down in a fit on the floor.
The doctor was sent for; Taffy went in a cab to the Hôtel de Lille et d'Albion to fetch his mother; and poor Little Billee, quite unconscious, was undressed by Sandy and Madame Vinard and put into the Laird's bed.
The doctor came, and not long after Mrs. Bagot and her daughter. It was a serious case. Another doctor was called in. Beds were got and made up in the studio for the two grief-stricken ladies, and thus closed the eve of what was to have been poor Little Billee's wedding-day, it seems.