"Yes," she said, softly—"I know it, Lorin. But we must say 'Good-bye,' for I am going away!"
"Not without me!" put in Wallace, advancing farther into the room. "Why, Laline, now that I have found you, do you think I shall let you give me the slip again? Look at my cousin there and look at me. Which of us looks as though he wanted a woman's helping, saving hand—he or I? He has his money-making, his friends, his amusements, his afternoon-parties and balls, his painting and dabbling in art. But what have I? I am shunned and despised because I went off the rails long ago and contracted bad habits which no one has ever cared for me sufficiently to break me of. If you had stuck by me all these years and had had a little patience with me, I should not have been the worthless wreck I have become."
She looked at him doubtfully, a woman's gentle pity struggling with her instinctive aversion against him.
"I could not have helped you!" she murmured. "And, when I had heard the truth, I could not stay."
"The truth!" he repeated, in what sounded like accents of genuine passion. "What do you call the truth? You heard an angry altercation between two men, neither of them wholly sober and each trying to provoke the other. I have never been one to wear my heart upon my sleeve, and, had I told your father I wanted to marry you because I loved you, and because I believed that you could make another man of me, he would have been the first to disbelieve me. Remember, though he was your father it was he who first ruined me, he who first introduced me to bad company, and taught me cynicism and taught me fraud. Oh, I was an apt enough pupil, I dare say! It is always easier to learn evil than good. But, Laline, with all my heart, bad as I may have been, I pitied you for the hardness of your life at Boulogne, and I meant to make you happy. In your pure eyes I read my last hope of salvation; and, though I won you by a trick, I never meant you to regret your bargain. I meant to reform—I should have reformed, but your desertion maddened me; and, since you left me, I have gone from bad to worse. Listen, Laline—I am your husband, but I renounce a husband's right to your obedience! I want your helping hand to save my life, such as it is, as a drowning man wants a rope to save him. Will you refuse to hold it out to me?"
His voice seemed to ring with sincerity and fervour. Laline began nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. Her eyes sought those of Lorin; but he, very pale, with features sternly set, stood a little apart from the other two, as though he knew that his part was played, and that he could now be only a spectator in their life-drama of life. Already he guessed how it would end, for he knew that his cousin would move Laline to pity and remorse, both of which would be causeless and undeserved.
For Lorin understood that his cousin was but acting the penitent to gain his own ends, as he had often acted it before and afterwards mocked at his own performance. In this case the prize for which he played was no longer the loosening of a credulous old man's purse-strings, but the life and soul of a woman, the woman Lorin loved.
Yet his tongue was tied. He would not even raise his eyes to her face lest he should influence her decision. And, as he waited in the silence that followed Wallace's appeal, Lorin felt himself growing old with pain.
Had he only known, it was his presence which swayed Laline far more than that of her husband. Her heart was torn between regrets for lost opportunities and neglected duties, pity for the man before her, and an instinctive, intense dislike against him; but, stronger than all these, there surged up in her heart a flood of passionate love for Lorin, a love so strong and unreasoning that she herself was terrified by its force. That she should feel thus now in the very presence of the man who had a legal right to claim her and whom she had sworn to cherish seemed to Laline a sting both horrible and sinful. Once she turned to Lorin appealingly; but his eyes were averted and he steadily avoided her gaze. The full daylight showed her her husband's face, worn and old before its time, his stooping form and prematurely silvered hair, and the look of eager humble longing he knew well how to assume.
Only by one act could she save herself and Lorin too, and it seemed to Laline that her mother's voice sounded in her ears, telling her of the duty which lay straight before her.