"I didn't say that! I asked ... if you had the right--now--to make yourself a--different girl. By that--"
"I'm afraid I've already made myself a different girl from what you thought. You knew that when mamma told you what I had done...."
Why couldn't he say that he wanted her twenty times over, no matter what she had done? It would have been easy to say that half an hour ago. Canning's reply was: "I've said again and again that you've done nothing. All this malicious scandal cannot touch you unless you yourself wilfully start it."
"You seem to care less about what I am, than about what people might think I am. And yet," she added, her hand upon her heart and her breath coming quicker and quicker, "you wonder that I let somebody else tell me what I am."
The deliberate reference to the revivalist fellow stung Canning like the flick of a glove in his face.
"Dr. Vivian? He has not my disadvantage of laboring to save his affianced's name from everlasting disgrace."
"Perhaps he doesn't find disgrace where you seem to look for it."
"It is cheap to be prodigal with other men's belongings. What is this man to you?"
"Hugo!--Hugo!" broke from her. "I can't bear this!... You must leave me."
"If I go," said Canning, trembling, "I do not return."