“Mildred, beyond what you have just said I know nothing of the contents of these letters; but whatever they may be, here and now, before I read them, I again offer to marry you. I owe it to you and to my own sense of what is right that I should marry you.”
He spoke calmly, and with evident sincerity.
“Do you know that I read your letter just now, and had half a mind to burn it; that I am little better than a thief?”
“I guessed that you had read it.”
“And do you understand that your Angela is unmarried, that she was never really married at all—and that she asks nothing better than to marry you?”
“I understand.”
“And you still offer to make me your wife?”
“I do. What do you say?”
A flood of light filled Mildred’s eyes as she rose and confronted him.
“I say, Arthur, that you are a very noble gentleman, and, that though from this day I must be a miserable woman, I shall always be proud to have loved you. Listen, my dear. When I read that letter, I felt that your Angela towered over me like the Alps, her snowy purity stained only by the reflected lights of heaven. I felt that I could not compete with such a woman as this, that I could never hope to hold you from one so calmly faithful, so dreadfully serene, and I knew that she had conquered, robbing me for Time, and, as I fear, leaving me beggared for Eternity. In the magnificence of her undying power, in the calm certainty of her command, she flings me your life as though it were nothing. ‘Take it,’ she says; ‘he will never love you—he is mine; but I can afford to wait. I shall claim him before the throne of God.’ But now, look you, Arthur, if you can behave like the generous- hearted gentleman you are, I will show you that I am not behind you in generosity. I will not marry you. I have done with you; or, to be more correct,” and she gave a hard little laugh, “you have done with me. Go back to Angela, the beautiful woman with inscrutable grey eyes, who waits for you, clothed in her eternal calm, like a mountain in its snows. I shall send her that tiara as a wedding-present; it will become her well. Go back, Arthur; but sometimes, when you are cloyed with unearthly virtue and perfection, remember that a woman loved you. There, I have made you quite a speech; you will always think of me in connection with fine words. Why don’t you go?”