He would not hear: "Oh, Flora Valcour! You smother me in my own loathing--oh, God send that gun!" The four hands still strove.
"Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora Valcour. Could Flora Valcour do like this--ag-ains' the whole nature of a woman--if she--?"
"Stop! stop! you shall not--"
"If she di'n' know, di'n' feel, di'n' see, thad you are loving her?"
"Yet God knows I've never given cause, except as--"
"A ladies' man?" prompted the girl and laughed.
The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was on hers as he held her from him, rigid; "Enough!" he cried; "We're caged and doomed. Yet you still have this one moment to save us, all of us, from life-long shame and sorrow."
She shook her head.
"Yes, yes," he cried. "You can. I cannot. I'm helpless now and forever. What man or woman, if I could ever be so vile as to tell it, could believe the truth of this from me? In God's name, then, go!" He tenderly thrust her off: "Go, live to honor, happiness and true love, and let me--"
"Ezcape, perchanze, to Anna?"