She had lost all colour as he spoke. A nervous spasm of laughter contracted her mouth, and remained on it like the ghastly rictus of death. She knew him well enough to know that he meant every syllable he said. The Vàsàrhely had had stern tragedies in their annals, and to women impure and unfaithful had been merciless as Othello.
She felt that she was vanquished; that she would have to obey him or suffer worse things. But though she was aware of her own impotence, she could not resist a retort that should sting him.
'You are very chivalrous! I always knew you had an insane adoration of your cousin, but I never should have thought you would have put on sabre and spurs in her husband's defence. Will he reward you by effacing himself? Will he end as he has begun, like the hero of a melodrama at the Gymnase, and shoot himself at Wanda's feet? You would marry a widow, though you would not marry a divorced woman!'
'Some time ago, when we spoke of him,' he replied, still with stern self-control, 'I told you that were his honour called in question I would defend it as I would my brother's—not for his sake, for hers. I would, for her sake, defend it so were he the guiltiest soul on earth. He belongs to her. He is sacred to me. You mistake if you deem her such a woman as yourself. She has loved him. She will love no other whilst she lives. She has given herself to him. She will give herself to no other, though she outlive him from this hour. You make your calculations unwisely, for when you make them you suppose that every man and every woman have your own dishonesty, your own passions, your own baseness. You are short of sight, because you only see in the circle of your own conceptions.'
She understood that he knew the secret of the man he protected, but that he would never admit that he did so; would never reveal it or let any other reveal it. She understood that he had himself forborne from its exposure, and would never, whilst he lived, allow any other to hold it up to the derision of the world. She understood that, if need were, Vàsàrhely would defend, as he said, the honour of his cousin's husband at the point of the sword against all foes or mockers.
'For her sake!' she cried, 'always for her sake! What can you both see so marvellous in her? She has been a greater fool than any woman that has ever lived, though she can read Greek and write in Latin! What has she done with all her wisdom and her holiness? You know as well as though it were written there upon the wall that he is what I say. Why do you put your lance in rest for him? Why are you ready to shed blood on his behalf? He is an impostor who has taken in first the world and then the mistress of Hohenszalras. If you were the hero you have always seemed to me you would tear his heart out of his breast, shoot him like a wolf in these very woods! If her honour is yours, avenge her dishonour!'
She spoke with force and fire, and longing to behold the spirit of evil roused in her hearer's soul and stung to action.
But she might as well have tried to move the mountains from their base as rouse either pain or rage in her brother-in-law. Vàsàrhely kept his attitude of stern, cold, contemptuous disgust. Not a muscle of his face changed. He said merely:
'You have been told what I shall do if you do not sign this paper. The choice is yours. If you desire to hear any more episodes of your past I can tell you many.'
Then she changed her attitude and her eloquence. She dissolved in tears; she wept; she implored; she tried to kneel to him. But he was inflexible.