“I will explain,” he said, with vehemence and commanding power before which, even for a moment, this imperious creature quailed. “I am not like the vain flatterers that follow in your train. I will speak, even if the hate in you, like a dagger, shall stab me in a vital spot.”
“Speak then,” said she, with resignation. “Courtesy compels me to listen to one who has honored my humble roof with his august presence.”
“Ah, hear me Ouida. The knowledge, sudden and fierce, has forced itself upon me, that I love you with all the strength of my nature!”
“And you have selected this novel way of showing it!”
As Ouida said this, she laughed with such chilling scorn, that it made the preacher shudder with agony.
“That we will not discuss,” said he, as the echo of her scorn died away. “Your life, your Bohemian instincts, your defiance of social laws, has maddened me. I would drive you from this unreal existence, so that in your despair you would turn to me. Then I should uplift you to my grand sphere.”
The idea of Horatio Nugent’s condescension struck Ouida with wondrous merriment, and she laughed again, the laughter growing more intense each moment, until it developed into an indignation almost boundless.
“Your own grand sphere!” she cried. “Drive back the Atlantic surf; lift valleys over mountain tops; throttle Vesuvius, and then come to me with a hope of tearing me and my art apart. I would not exchange an eternity in hell and my work for Paradise with the crude, narrow, dogmatic officialism of your hypocritically pious life.”
“I have less quarrel with your art than with your life,” continued he. “These Bacchanalian revels, this freedom with men so maddening to me. These are the things from which I would save you.”