“Oh, it is you that preaches now—you that tempted me, that said I was wasted at the Manor; that the parish did not understand me; that Jean Jacques did not know a jewel of price when he saw it—little did you think of Zoe then!”
He made a protesting gesture. “Maybe so, Carmen, but I think now before it is too late.”
“The child loves her father as she never loved me,” she declared. “She is twelve years old. She will soon be old enough to keep house for him, and then to marry—ah, before there is time to think she will marry!”
“It would be better then for you to wait till she marries before—before—”
“Before I go away with you!” She gave a shrill, agonized laugh. “So that is the end of it all! What did you think of my child when you forced your way into my life, when you made me think of you—ah, quel bete—what a coward and beast you are!”
“No, I am not all coward, though I may be a beast,” he answered. “I didn’t think of your child when I began to talk to you as I did. I was out for all I could get. I was the hunter. And you were the finest woman that I’d ever met and talked with; you—”
“Oh, stop lying!” she cried with a face suddenly grown white and cold.
“It isn’t lying. You’re the sort of woman to drive men mad. I went mad, and I didn’t think of your child. But this morning in the flume I saved my life by thinking of her, and I saved your life, too, maybe, by thinking of her; and I owe her something. I’m going to try to pay back by letting her keep her mother. I never felt towards a woman as I’ve felt towards you; and that’s why I want to make things not so bad for you as they might be.”
In her bitter eagerness she took a step nearer to him. “As things might be, if you were the man you were yesterday, willing to throw up everything for me?”
“Like that—if you put it so,” he answered.