"You have already told me that you love Sir John Custance," he said. "I heard that from your own lips two days ago. But 'love' means many things. And you may well have said it to keep me at arm's length. Sir John Custance is here now, and in my power. What of him and you?"
Connie looked at him for a moment without a word. There was not a trace of fear in her eyes. "I will tell you," she said at length. "That man is my man, and I am his woman from now until the end of time and for all eternity. You cannot understand, I know. But if words have meaning, mine are plain enough."
Helzephron suddenly threw away his cigarette and gave what seemed to be a sigh of relief. The sound, the gesture, were startling. I could not understand....
"Well," he said, "that is another, and the last, illusion gone. My life has been a succession of lost illusions, I think. I loved you, and I love you still, with all the force and power of a nature which, whatever else it may be, is stronger than that of most men in this feeble world. I would have given you a love so rich, abundant and wonderful that you would have forgotten your passion for this man. Mine would have consumed it utterly. And you would have responded. You think not, but I know better. It would have been flame and flame, LOVE. Now I see that it is indeed too late."
His tones were not raised; there was nothing particularly eloquent in the actual words he spoke. But to me they tolled like a great bell—a bell that tolls while the iron gates of hell are opening slowly....
"Yes, too late!" Connie said quickly. "And you see it now! It could never have been. And now you will let us go! Oh, be quick! Untie John, please do; it must be hurting him so!"
For the first and last time that night two tears rolled down my cheeks.
I suppose that for a brief space there had been some lingering nobility in Helzephron's mind, some flicker of life in that dark soul. The man had not always been under the dominion of evil.
But now I saw, without possibility of mistake, the final eclipse of good. It was a visible thing, the last awful act in the terrible drama of his life, and it took place before one's eyes like crystals dissolving in a glass.