"You—you dare to think—you dare to—to say—?" he stammered.
"I say that you must come away from Mrs. Armine. Don't ask me to say why."
"You—you liar! You damnable liar!"
He spoke slowly, in a low, husky voice.
"That you hated her, I knew that! She told me that. But that you—that you should dare to—"
His voice broke, and he stopped. He leaned forward in his chair and made a gesture.
"Go!" he said. "Get out! If I—if I were myself, I'd put you out."
But Isaacson did not move. He felt no anger, nothing but a supreme pity for this man who could not see, could not understand the truth of a nature with which he had held commune for so long, and, as he in his blindness believed, in such a perfect intimacy. There was to the Doctor something shocking in such blindness, in such ignorance. But there was something beautiful, too. And to destroy beauty is terrible.
"If I am to go, you must hear me first," he said, quietly.
"I won't hear you—not one word!"