‘It is useless, Madge. I could not go back to poverty, laborious days and nights, the struggle for daily bread. I could not lead that kind of life again.’
‘Not with me, Churchill? We could go away, to the other end of the world. To Australia, where life is simpler and easier than in England. We could know peace again; for you might dare to hope, if your sacrifice were freely made, that God had accepted it as an atonement.’
‘Can I atone to the dead? Will James Penwyn, in his untimely grave, be any better off because some impostor riots in the wealth that ought to have been his? A left-handed atonement that!’
‘But if you find that this girl is no impostor?’
‘The lawyers will have to decide that. If she can establish her right, you and I, and our boy, will have to say good-bye to Penwyn.’
‘Happy loss if it lighten the burden of your sin. Do you think that I shall be sorry to leave this place, Churchill? I have never known peace here since——’
She threw herself upon his breast with a shuddering sigh.
‘Madge, my dearest, my angel of love and compassion, be content to abide the issue of events. Leave all to me.’
‘No, Churchill,’ she answered, raising her head, and looking at him with grave and earnest eyes, ‘I am not content. You know that since that bitter day I have left you in peace. I have not wearied you with my tears. I have suffered in secret, and have made it the chief duty of my life to lighten your burden, so far as in me lay. But I can be content no longer. The wealth that has weighed upon my soul can now be given up, with honour. The world can find no subject for slander in your quiet surrender of an estate for which a new claimant has arisen. And we can begin life afresh together, love, your soul purified by sacrifice, your conscience lightened, your peace made with God. We can begin life anew in some distant land, humbly, toilfully; so far away from all past cares, that your wrong-doing may seem no more than the memory of an evil dream, and all the future open for manifold good deeds that shall weigh against that one dreadful sin.’
She seemed like an angel pleading with him for the salvation of his soul, yet he resisted her.