Morris raised his hands, as if to request the opportunity of replying. But Evarne did not, perhaps could not, cease one instant in her impassioned appeal.
"You know better than almost anyone that I am not light-natured, or really indifferent to right and wrong. You did care for me once—I know it—and there was a time when I would have turned to you with perfect confidence in any trouble. By the memory of those days, I implore you not to drag me again into the lowest depths of misery. And Geoff too—pity him, and spare him. Let him live his own life, and love in peace, and marry as his heart dictates. You can't always go by hard and fast laws. I am sure, I am convinced, that the greatest good—that nothing but good—could ever come from your keeping silence upon the wrongs, the faults, the deceptions and miseries that have gone by. Only fresh harm, more widespread evil, immediate and life-long, irreparable and unnecessary—oh think, so unnecessary—can arise from your determination to oppose a marriage that would be—be.... Oh, Morris, we do love each other so much!"
She flung her whole soul into this plea. As so often happens, the actual words were by far the weakest part of the appeal. It was her voice, low-pitched in its earnest entreaty, and at times quivering and uncertain, that betrayed most clearly the depth of her agitation—the vital force of tortured feelings. And as these tremulous tones died away, her entire personality continued to give the impression that her very life hung upon Morris's response. She leaned towards him; her fair face, so expressive, so appealing, was very close to his. Those eager brown eyes, now so full of passionate persuasion, seemed to burn to his innermost consciousness. Not for one moment could Morris doubt the reality of her deep affection for the man she desired to marry.
He admired total abandonment of any sort. Something of her old charm fell upon him, and for a passing moment he came near to envying his young cousin the possession of this all-dominating love that he himself had once so lightly flung aside and disregarded. Thus, besides the need of resisting the encroachment of sentiment upon his resolve, he felt a touch of jealousy—a decided though unacknowledged displeasure at finding the heart that was once his footstool now so entirely emancipated from his service. It was this sense of personal grievance that caused him to answer her with a dash of that brutality that came so easily to his lips.
"The saints protect me from the responsibility of disarranging any ideal union, but the one you suggest is in every way about as unsuitable as could possibly be imagined. Doubtless you are absolutely devoted to Geoffrey—thousands of girls could easily adore the heir to an earldom. But forget your charming romantic feelings and try to look at the matter from an impersonal point of view. You are an artist's model. It may be the most refined and elevating profession imaginable, but—well—we commonplace people who belong neither to the race of poets nor artists find it rather difficult to reconcile—well—you comprehend? I won't press that point."
"That is nothing at all to Geoff!" breathed Evarne.
"Then, if I understood rightly, you came very near to including utter starvation in that intensely interesting recital of your experiences," he went on. "Of course, that's very sad—quite touching, in fact. But now, do you suppose that a few years ahead we want troops of American tourists trotting out to the slums to visit the garret wherein the Countess of Winborough nearly starved? I can assure you that, although I shan't be here, I object very strongly to the possibility. Oh, Geoffrey thinks he wouldn't mind, I dare say. I only wonder he hasn't already painted a picture of you in rags and tatters gazing into a cupboard like old Mother Hubbard and labelled it 'Suffering Virtue.' That's his belief about you, isn't it?"
Evarne felt her whole body tingling with hot indignation. She rose impetuously from the arm-chair, and walked rapidly to the farther end of the room. Such was the overwhelming hatred of this man that awoke again with renewed power within her breast, that his near presence was not to be endured.
"And isn't it true?" she demanded, speaking quickly and with impassioned emphasis. "Is not the very phrase that you are mean and base enough to fling at me in derision nothing more nor less than Heaven's truth? Is it not entirely because I did indeed prefer my own self-respect to ill-gotten money that there is a showplace in London such as you describe? That squalid room, and the cruel ordeals I underwent within its walls, are the very witnesses that testify to my claim to be held a good woman and a fit wife for any man. Not a day passed without my enduring more than you can ever realise. I was entirely without hope for the future, yet never once—never once, I tell you—did I regret the choice I had made.
"That grinding poverty was no shame to me," she went on, "but a glory; and no one knows that better than you—you, Morris Kenyon! And I would go back to it—live and die in it—rather than lose my own consciousness of virtue. You despicable coward! How dare you come here and taunt me with humiliations for which you alone are responsible? Everything that is degrading and wretched in my life has been brought into it by you. You indeed did your best to turn me into a woman whom a man well might fear to entrust with his name and with his honour, but that garret cries out to you and to all the world the story of your failure. It is infamous—vile—to bring forward such an acceptance of poverty as a reason for opposing your cousin's choice of me as his wife. It is infamous, and you know it."