"And if I had been what you call a good man, what then?"
"I do not know."
"But it would influence you?"
"It would influence me greatly."
"You believe in all you have heard?"
"You have denied nothing—and no, Mr. Leicester, even if I loved a bad man, I would crush that love—that is, as you have been speaking of it."
He called to mind what he had said to Sprague and Purvis on the night the compact was made, and while there was a feeling of joy in his heart at her words, the memory of that night pierced him like a poisoned arrow. This woman had disproved his creed by a single sentence. For he knew that she meant it. There was no weak, faltering hesitancy in her words. The flash of her eyes, the tone of her voice, told him that she had uttered no idle threat. Here was a nature as strong as his own, a nature which loved goodness as much as he had pretended to despise it.
He felt that the ground was slipping under his feet, but he retained his calm.
"Wait a moment," he said, "there is something else I want to say to you."