"Father, is this thing true?" Her voice fell to a terror-stricken whisper.
"Oh, it is true enough," said Karloff. "God knows that it is true enough. But it rests with you to save him. Become my wife, and yonder fire shall swallow his dishonor—and mine. Refuse, and I shall expose him. After all, love is a primitive state, and with it we go back to the beginning; before it honor or dishonor is nothing. To-night there is nothing, nothing in the world save my love for you, and the chance that has given me the power to force you to be mine. What a fury and a tempest love produces! It makes an honorable man of the knave, a rascal of the man of honor; it has toppled thrones, destroyed nations, obliterated races. … Well, I have become a rascal. Mademoiselle, you must become my wife." He lifted his handsome head resolutely.
Without giving him so much as a glance, she swept past him and sank on her knees at her father's side, taking his hands by the wrists and pressing them down from his face.
"Father, tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!" Ah, the entreaty, the love, the anxiety, the terror that blended her tones!
He strove to look away.
"Father, you are all I have," she cried brokenly. "Look at me! Look at me and tell him that he lies!… You will not look at me? God have mercy on me, it is true, then!" She rose and spread her arms toward heaven to entreat God to witness her despair. "I did not think or know that such base things were done… That these loving hands should have helped to encompass my father's dishonor, his degradation! … For money! What is money? You knew, father, that what was mine was likewise yours. Why did you not tell me? I should have laughed; we should have begun all over again; I could have earned a living with my music; we should have been honest and happy. And now!… And I drew those plans with a heart full of love and happiness! Oh, it is not that you gambled, that you have foolishly wasted a fortune; it is not these that hurt here,"—pressing her heart. "It is the knowledge that you, my father, should let me draw those horrible things. It hurts! Ah, how it hurts!" A sob choked her. She knelt again at her parent's side and flung her arms around the unhappy, wretched man. "Father, you have committed a crime to shield a foolish act. I know, I know! What you have done you did for my sake, to give me back what you thought was my own. Oh, how well I know that you had no thought of yourself; it was all for me, and I thank God for that. But something has died here, something here in my heart. I have been so happy! … too happy! My poor father!" She laid her head against his breast.
"My heart is broken! Would to God that I might die!" Annesley threw one arm across the back of the chair and turned his face to his sleeve.
Karloff, a thousand arrows of regret and shame and pity quivering in his heart, viewed the scene moodily, doggedly. No, he could not go back; there was indeed a wall behind him: pride.
"Well, Mademoiselle?"
She turned, still on her knees.