"So you want to be ride of me, _Monsieur mon Maître—cancel my indentures—end my apprenticeship to the school of life—turn me adrift in a wicked world, which already treats me none too kindly. Is it wise, I say? Is it kind, is it human—just because a woman crosses our path and threatens my reputation? Look at me. Am I not the same that I was before? Now have I fallen in your graces? You, who professed a while ago to love me—oh, so madly?"
He was silent and would not look at her.
"Or is it me that you fear, mon cher?" she taunted him. "Is it that I've learned too well your lessons? That I've foresworn the conventions which stifled me, the code which enslaved me, that I've earned at last my right to live unbound, untrammeled—with no code but the love of life, no law but that of my own instincts—is it because of this that you deny me? O John Markham! What becomes of your fine philosophy? And of your natural laws? Do they fall, with me, before the first challenge from the world they profess to ignore? It is to laugh."
While she vented her joy of him he rose and faced her, but she did not flinch. Her voice only dropped a tone, and now derided, mocked and cajoled.
"Do you fear me so much, Monsieur le Maître?" she laughed. "Is it that I love you too much to love you wisely? Why should you care, mon ami? Is it not the lot of women to give—always to give?"
Still he turned away from her, his hands fast in his pockets, but a warning murmur broke from his lips. She did not hear it and, coming around behind him, clasped her fingers upon his arms.
"If I tell you that I do not love you, mon ami, will not that be enough—enough to satisfy you that my happiness is not in danger? If I do not love you, what can you fear for me? Why should I care what the world thinks of us? Have I reproached you? Did I not give myself into your keeping, without—"
He turned and caught her into his arms and stopped her mockery with kisses, the man in him triumphant, while she struggled, her lips denied him, dumb and quivering in his arms.
"Now perhaps you know——why it is that you must go," he whispered. "Read it here. I'm mad for you, Hermia—that is why. I can't any longer be with you without reaching forth to take you——you're mine by every law of God or Nature. Philosophy! Who cares? Your lips have babbled it. Let them babble it now—if they dare—"
"Let me go, Philidor," she gasped.