“I suppose I am to blame,” he said with sulky rage after a moment. “I’m willing to shoulder all the blame there is—but why should Olivia Berkeley be insulted and annoyed by this kind of thing? Do you think you will ever accomplish anything by—” he stopped and blushed both for himself and her.
“One thing is certain,” he continued. “After what you have said to Olivia Berkeley, questioning her about me, as you have admitted, I shall simply carry out my intention of asking her to marry me. She shall at least know the truth from me. But I think my chances are desperate. Pshaw! I have no chance at all. It’s rather grotesque, don’t you think, for a man to ask a woman to marry him when he knows that she will throw him over and despise him from the bottom of her heart?”
“That I must decline to discuss with you,” quietly answered Madam Koller. She was indeed quiet, for at last—and in an instant, she realized that she must forever give up Pembroke. All that long journey was for nothing—all those months of wretched loneliness, of still more wretched hopes and fears, were in vain. She heard Pembroke saying:
“You had best let me see you home. It is too late for you to be out alone.”
“You will not,” she replied. “I will not permit you, after what you have said, to go one step with me.”
Pembroke felt thoroughly ashamed. It was one of the incidents of his association with Madame Koller and Ahlberg that they always made him say and do things he was ashamed of. In short, they demoralized him. He had been betrayed by temper and by circumstances into things that were utterly against his self-respect—like this ebullition of rage against a woman. In the plenitude of his remorse he was humble to the last degree.
“May I,” he asked—“may I, at least accompany you to your own grounds? It is really not safe for you.”
Madame Koller turned upon him and stamped her foot.
“No, no—always no. Do you think there is any danger on earth from which I would accept your protection? Go to Olivia Berkeley. She would marry you in your poverty if it suited her whim, and be a millstone around your neck. Go to her, I say.”
Pembroke watched her figure disappearing in the dusk along the faint white line of the road. He stood still with his horse’s bridle in his hand, turning over bitter things in his mind. He thought he would not go to Isleham that night. He was depressed and conscience-stricken, and in no lover-like mood. He mounted his horse and rode slowly back to Malvern.