"Oh, Mérat, don't talk to me, don't talk to me; they have got her!"
Then a sudden idea seized him.
"Come into the dining-room," he said. "You know Mr. Harding? He is there." He passed out of the room, leaving the door open for Mérat to follow through. "Harding, read this letter." He stood watching Harding while he read; but before Harding was half-way down the page he said: "You see, she is going into a convent. They have got her, they have got her! But they shan't get her as long as I have a shoulder with which to force in a door. The doors of those mansions where she has gone to live are not very strong, are they, Mérat? She shall see me; she shall not go to that convent. That blasted priest shall not get her. Those ghouls of nuns!" And he was about to break from the room when Mérat threw herself in front of him.
"Remember, Sir Owen, she has been very ill; remember what has happened, and if you prevent her from going to the convent—"
"So, Mérat, you're against me too? You want to drive her into a convent, do you?"
"Sir Owen, you hardly know what you are saying. I am thinking of what might happen if you went to Ayrdale Mansions and forced in the door. Sir Owen, I beg of you."
"Then if you oppose me you are responsible. They will get her, I tell you; those blasted ghouls, haunters of graveyards, diggers of graves, faint creatures who steal out of the light, mumblers of prayers! You know, Harding, what I say is true. God!" He raised his fist in the air and fell back into an armchair, screaming oaths and blasphemies without sense. It was on Harding's lips to say, "Asher, you are making a show of yourself." "Vous vous donnez en spectacle" were the words that crossed Mérat's mind. But there was something noble in this crisis, and Harding admired Owen—here was one who was not afraid to shriek out and to rage. And what nobler cause for a man's rage?
"The woman he loves is about to be taken out of the sunlight into the grey shadow of the cloister. Why shouldn't he rage?"
"To sing of death, not of life, and where the intelligence wilts and bleaches!" he shrieked. "What an awful end! don't you understand? Devils! devils!" and he slipped from his chair suddenly on to the hearthrug, and lay there tearing at it with his fingers. The elegant fribble of St. James' Street had passed back to the primeval savage robbed of his mate.
"You give way to your feelings, Asher."