"Proud, madam—I?"
"Cruelly, wickedly, hatefully proud! Oh, dear me! what a superbly virtuous, heroic fool you are, Barnabas. When you met her at the crossroads, for instance—oh, I know all about it—when you had her there—in your arms, why didn't you—run off with her and marry her, as any ordinary human man would have done? Dear heaven, it would have been so deliciously romantic! And—such an easy way out of it!"
"Yes," said Barnabas, beginning to frown, "so easy that it was—wrong!"
"Quite so and fiddlesticks!" sniffed the Duchess.
"Madam?"
"Oh, sir, pray remember that one wrong may sometimes make two right! As it is, you will let your abominable pride—yes, pride! wreck and ruin two lives. Bah!" cried the Duchess very fiercely as she rose and turned to the door, "I've no patience with you!"
"Ah, Duchess," said Barnabas, staying her with pleading hands, "can't you see—don't you understand? Were she, this proud lady, my wife, I must needs be haunted, day and night, by the fear that some day, soon or late, she would find me to be—not of her world—not the man she would have me, but only—the publican's son, after all. Now—don't you see why I dare not?"
"Oh, Pride! Pride!" exclaimed the Duchess. "Do you expect her to come to you, then—would you have her go down on her knees to you, and—beg you to marry her?"
Barnabas turned to the window again and stood there awhile staring blindly out beyond the swaying green of trees; when at last he spoke his voice was hoarse and there was a bitter smile upon his lips.
"Yes, Duchess," said he slowly, "before such great happiness could be mine she must come to me, she must go down upon her knees—proud lady that she is—and beg this innkeeper's son to marry her. So you see, Duchess, I—shall never marry!"