"And if it be sin, it is too late to vex ourselves about that. You have forced the barrier after all. The curtain, which closes the entrance to your not very cheerful Eden, has swung back into place. I have you, and I keep you. I have fought for you, won you, not wholly without personal loss. So you are to me as the spoils of battle, which a man having taken, is very certainly in no humour hurriedly to give up. And even were this so, had I not these claims on your obedience, to eat, my dear, couldn't be sin. On the contrary, it is bare common-sense—just the next move, logically necessary, in the particularly delicious game which you and I, for cause unknown, are ordained to play together. With logic and common-sense as backers, how can sin have a word to say in the matter?"
"Thus," she answered—"because now as once before, when the perfect hour had come, and things showed so fair that to better them appeared almost impossible, the call has come for you to leave me, and leave me you surely must."
"You are mistaken," Laurence answered hoarsely. "You confuse both the events and obligations of the past with those of the present. The call has not come."
Then Agnes Rivers rose up, pushing the carven chair away from her, and standing with a certain graceful independence before the sumptuously spread table, in the centre of the highly-lighted room, between the open window and the open door. Her person, thus seen, suggested some clear jewel of infinite value in a dark and heavy though splendid setting; or some tender, solitary flower amid the lifeless magnificence of a desert city, rich with the tombs of long-dead kings. A gentle daring, a self-assertion strong as steel yet soft as a silken thread, seemed to animate her whole being.
"Rather is it you that are mistaken," she answered; "but whether with your consent or against it, I cannot tell. It is you that dream just now, my love, and suffer, perhaps subscribe to, delusion—strong man though you are—and I that wake. For the call has come to you; and though you should employ all the eloquence of all the sages to convince me it is otherwise, I could not be convinced."
"You are very stubborn," he said.
"And yet, I spare you," she replied, in a tone of half mirthful, half tender, reproach; "for I only assert the fact. The exact nature of the call I do not know, and I do not ask you to tell it me. I am sufficiently human—you have brought me so far on the backward road, which my naughty feet were only too willing to tread—to greatly long to know the exact nature of that call. Yet, did I know it, I fear it might provoke a wicked spirit of jealousy in me, and of envy towards one who has, in the natural sequence of things, that which I have not, yet fain would have. Therefore do not try me too far, lest my courage fail and I decline from right, and break the perfect circle of our dealings with one another, so painting both past and future with the ugly colours of remorseful regret. You told me you would never leave me again unless I bade you do so. Well, now, the time has come. Redeem your word."
Laurence would have spoken; but, still with that air of almost heavenly mirth, she laid her hand upon his mouth. There was hardly perceptible substance or weight in it; and once again—now with despair, though the sensation was in itself delicious—he felt that fluttering, as of the wings of a captive butterfly, against his lips.
"No, no," she protested, "do not speak, for I am woman enough to be resolved to have the last word. Put away delusion and all extravagance.—Think, after all, what do you leave? Not much, believe me. For I am but a ghost. I have no right to any earthly dwelling-place, no right to lie in the arms of living man. It would be monstrous, a thing abhorrent to nature, an insult to the awful and unbroken order of cause and effect that has operated from the beginning of being and of time, that I should force the barrier completely, and project myself, at once unburied and unborn, for a second time into the arena of earthly life. It would be an act of rebellion, of self-seeking, beside which that of Lucifer grows pale—for he at least was an archangel, which might give reasonable cause of pride—whereas I?—No, God in His infinite mercy has granted me fulness of understanding just in time; and I have no fear but that, since I voluntarily resign myself, curb my imperious will and forego the desire of my heart, He will further grant me access to that place of refreshment, light, and peace, in which souls wait until their final beatitude. In God's hands are all things, and I now see that behind the loves of earth, just in proportion as those loves are noble and have in them a seed of permanence, stands for ever the love of God Himself, sure and faithful, full of a satisfaction that can never lessen or pass away. I have been blind and very wilful, loving Him too little, loving you too much. But He who made all men and sees how beautiful they are, so that in loving them—they being made in His image—we unconsciously all the while but love His image evident in them—He will surely understand me and forgive."
There Laurence broke in madly—"Ah, stop talking, stop talking! What are words at such a time as this? You are mine by right of conquest, as I have already told you. For God and the eternities I care not, just now, one little bit. You belong to me. I have bought you at a great price. I love you and will enter into possession of my own."