Something tortured and leashed within him leapt up flinging itself savagely against his self-control.
"What is an adventuress, Anne? A woman who ventures? What better thing can any of us do?" He spoke half-jestingly, striving to ward off the issue that was to arise between them; but there was no pity in the hard eyes which she lifted for a moment to his face.
"Are you going to be one of those who are prepared to sneer at our morality—at the whole prestige of our race?" she asked.
Even then he marvelled at her. She had been so young, so childish. She challenged him now with a mature fixity of outlook and of character. She might have been an old woman. And he knew that it was no sudden development. It had been there always, a deep-rooted inheritance of her kind.
"I cannot be other than I am," he said steadily. "As to prestige—doesn't it belong to our English greatness to shoulder our responsibilities? We're responsible to a man like Barclay. He belongs to us more than any man of our own blood. Don't you realize—he's our fault—we've flung him into his position. We've made him what he is. He had an English father—Anne, and he has a claim on me I cannot and will not ignore."
He saw the curl of her lips. It was an answer straight from those past generations stronger than all reason.
"We must stamp out our sins—not foster them. And that woman—do you expect me to meet her—the Rajah's mistress—this man's bought property——"
"Anne!" A sick horror surged up within him—horror of his own passionate anger—horror in some dim way mingled with a vicarious shame. He turned away from her. But the instinctive chivalry which prompted the action was unnecessary. She held her ground with the resolution of justification. "Anne, you're speaking recklessly. I know that what you say is not true. And even if it were—I can't judge other people—it's not in me—I feel no right in me to judge. There's only one distinction I can make between men and women—the happy and the unhappy, the blessed and the cursed——"
"The good and the evil," she interrupted stonily. "There is only one morality, Tristram——"
He drew himself to his full and splendid height. The red sunlight glowed on his impassioned face, in his blazing eyes. For an instant he forgot her—became free, breathing in the glory of his faith.