"Respect! Oh, Cyprian——" But he could not spare her anything just then. He was too cruelly wounded.
"How can you—how can I believe that you have the smallest respect for me when I see myself, through this indefensible proposal of yours, as you must see me? Cannot you understand that what constituted a drug to deaden the physical suffering—I repeat the word, for that mental pain was physical to me caused by your withdrawal and your silence in a life which had been unconsciously centred in you for nearly eleven years—must affect me like a corroding poison, even in retrospect, now that sanity and mental control have returned with your presence?"
She stirred restlessly, struck with the justification for this point of view.
"Then, there is the moral aspect. Sometimes, I think that you, despite your genuine religious mysticism, are absolutely unmoral in your normal outlook. One can condone wrong too far. Your very compassion for that which right-minded people should shun becomes, of its injurious weakness, a sin. But—Good God!—who am I to talk to you of sin. I have not denied that you are infinitely above me, but I did not grasp you considered the gulf between us quite so wide as this morning you have made it out to be."
"Cyprian!"
The anguish in her voice roused him to some realization as to how far he had lost his temper. Still dazed with the shock she had afforded him, he saw her crumple up like a victim of lightning herself, across the solid writing-desk.
He went to her then and gathered her against his angrily-beating heart.
Strange that neither of them wondered what lay hidden in the heart of Hla Byu.
Ferlie, whenever she met her about the house, would smile kindly in place of the conversation which was impossible, and Thu Daw's picturesque little mother invariably smiled back, but her slanting brows lent enigma to this acknowledgment of the white woman's recognition.
She had been told that her Thakin, on whose generous supplies she had patiently lived apart, had returned across the great water, bringing with him a sister. But this was no sister, determined Hla Byu. Once, also, in careless answer to discreet questioning, the Thakin had informed her that he was alone in the world; except for herself, she had understood.