"And I for the moment felt like believing in God," he said, like one talking to himself. He thought he was going to fall on the hard stone floor. His head was whirling, his limbs were trembling. He seemed to have lost all control over himself.
"My sister!" he said. "Great God! My sister! And I love her as a man loves his wife!" A new passion, a new force had entered his life now. His longing for revenge was conquered by another feeling, a nobler feeling. Love for Mary Bolitho was stronger than a desire to be revenged on his father. At all hazards she must not suffer. But—but—— No, he could not grasp it. His brain refused to fasten upon the real issues of the case. His thoughts were as elusive as a mist cloud. His brain swam. Everything was real, terribly real, but nothing was real! What could he do?
Never, surely, was man placed in such a horrible position. He had thought a few nights before, when he had fought his battle between love for his own mother and the desire to keep disgrace and death from her, and the love for his own life, a life which could be made bright and beautiful, that the great struggle was over. It seemed to him then that he had fought his last battle and had won it. Duty had overcome self-love. But it seemed as nothing compared with the issues which now stared him in the face.
"My sister! My sister!" he repeated. "The same father, although not the same mother. Do I love her the less? Does my heart cry out for her one whit the less because we are children of the same father?"
No. Why, he could not understand, but she seemed even more to him than ever. The new link which bound them together seemed also, if possible, to strengthen his love and to make him more than ever long for her happiness.
"He's your father; you believe that?" said the woman, who had been looking at him as though she would read his very soul.
"Yes," he replied.
"And she is your sister."
"Yes."
"Then if your birth is honourable, hers is base," said the mother passionately. Even at that moment the longing to do justice to her son was uppermost in her mind and heart. "I am his true wife; remember that! He married me. I can't be robbed of that, Paul, can I?"