Alan wavered as she spoke. He felt what she said was true; even if he refused to take her on the only terms she could accept, he would not thereby save her. She would turn in time and bestow herself upon some man who would perhaps be less worthy of her—nay even on some man who might forsake her in the sequel with unspeakable treachery. Of conduct like that, Alan knew himself incapable. He knew that if he took Herminia once to his heart, he would treat her with such tenderness, such constancy, such devotion as never yet was shown to living woman. (Love always thinks so.) But still, he shrank from the idea of being himself the man to take advantage of her; for so in his unregenerate mind he phrased to himself their union. And still he temporised. “Even so, Herminia,” he cried, bending forward and gazing hard at her, “I couldn’t endure to have it said it was I who misled you.”
Herminia lifted her eyes to his with just a tinge of lofty scorn, tempered only by the womanliness of those melting lashes. “And you can think of that? she murmured, gazing across at him half in tears. “O Alan, for my part I can think of nothing now but the truths of life and the magnitude of the issues. Our hearts against the world—love and duty against convention.”
Then Alan began again and talked all he knew. He urged, he prayed, he bent forward, he spoke soft and low, he played on her tenderest chords as a loving woman. Herminia was moved, for her heart went forth to him, and she knew why he tried so hard to save her from her own higher and truer nature. But she never yielded an inch. She stood firm to her colours. She shook her head to the last, and murmured over and over again, “There is only one right way, and no persuasion on earth will ever avail to turn me aside from it.”
The Truth had made her Free, and she was very confident of it.
At last, all other means failing, Alan fell back on the final resort of delay. He saw much merit in procrastination. There was no hurry, he said. They needn’t make up their minds, one way or the other, immediately. They could take their time to think. Perhaps, with a week or two to decide in, Herminia might persuade him; or he might persuade her. Why rush on fate so suddenly?
But at that, to his immense surprise, Herminia demurred. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head, “that’s not at all what I want. We must decide today one way or the other. Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation. I couldn’t let you wait, and slip by degrees into some vague arrangement we hardly contemplated definitely. To do that would be to sin against my ideas of decorum. Whatever we do we must do, as the apostle says, decently and in order, with a full sense of the obligations it imposes upon us. We must say to one another in so many words, ‘I am yours; you are mine;’ or we must part forever. I have told you my whole soul; I have bared my heart before you. You may take it or leave it; but for my dignity’s sake, I put it to you now, choose one way or the other.”
Alan looked at her hard. Her face was crimson by this with maidenly shame; but she made no effort to hide or avert it. For the good of humanity, this question must be settled once for all; and no womanish reserve should make her shrink from settling it. Happier maidens in ages to come, when society had reconstructed itself on the broad basis of freedom, would never have to go through what she was going through that moment. They would be spared the quivering shame, the tingling regret, the struggle with which she braced up her maiden modesty to that supreme effort. But she would go through with it all the same. For eternal woman’s sake she had long contemplated that day; now it had come at last, she would not weakly draw back from it.
Alan’s eyes were all admiration. He stood near enough to her level to understand her to the core. “Herminia,” he cried, bending over her, “you drive me to bay. You press me very hard. I feel myself yielding. I am a man; and when you speak to me like that, I know it. You enlist on your side all that is virile within me. Yet how can I accept the terms you offer? For the very love I bear you, how do you this injustice? If I loved you less, I might perhaps say yes; because I love you so well, I feel compelled to say no to you.”
Herminia looked at him hard in return. Her cheeks were glowing now with something like the shame of the woman who feels her love is lightly rejected. “Is that final?” she asked, drawing herself up as she sat, and facing him proudly.
“No, no, it’s not final,” Alan answered, feeling the woman’s influence course through body and blood to his quivering fingertips. Magical touches stirred him. “How can it be final, Herminia, when you look at me like that? How can it be final, when you’re so gracious, so graceful, so beautiful? Oh, my child, I am a man; don’t play too hard on those fiercest chords in my nature.”