‘Yes, the heiress.’
‘I know her cousin, George Craik—we were at school together. I thought they were engaged.’
‘They were once, but she broke it off long ago.’
‘And she has accepted you?’ ‘Unconditionally.’ He added with strange fervour: ‘She is the noblest, the sweetest, and most beautiful woman in the world.’
‘Then why on earth do you hesitate?’ asked Cholmondeley. ‘You are a lucky fellow.’
‘I hesitate for the reason I have told you. She had placed her love, her life, her fortune at my feet, devotedly and unreservedly. As a clergyman of the Church, as one who might have devoted his lifetime to the re-establishment of his religion and the regeneration of his order, one, moreover, whom the world would have honoured and approved as a good and faithful servant, I might have accepted the sacrifice; indeed, after some hesitation, I did accept it. But now it is altogether different. I cannot consent to her martyrdom, even though it would glorify mine.’
Although Bradley exercised the strongest control over his emotions, and endeavoured to discuss the subject as dispassionately and calmly as possible, it was clear to his listener that he was deeply and strangely moved. Cholmondeley was touched, for he well knew the secret tenderness of his friend’s nature. Under that coldly cut, almost stern face, with its firm eyebrows and finely chiselled lips—within that powerful frame which, so far at least as the torso was concerned, might have been used as a model for Hercules—there throbbed a heart of almost feminine sensitiveness and sweetness; of feminine passion too, if the truth must be told, for Bradley possessed the sensuousness of most powerful men. Bradley was turned thirty years of age, but he was as capable of a grande passion as a boy of twenty—as romantic, as high-flown, as full of the fervour of youth and the brightness of dream. With him, to love a woman was to love her with all his faith and all his life; he was far too earnest to trifle for a moment with the most sacred of all human sentiments. Cholmondeley was aware of this, and gauged the situation accordingly.
‘If my advice is worth anything,’ he said, ‘you will dismiss from your mind all ideas of martyrdom. You are really exaggerating the horrors of the situation; and, for the rest, where a woman loves a man as I am sure Miss Craik loves you, sacrifice of the kind you mention becomes easy, even delightful. Marry her, my dear Bradley, and from the very altar of pagan Hymen smile at the thunderbolts of the Church.’
Bradley seemed plunged in deep thought, and sat silent, leaning back and covering his face with one hand. At last he looked up, and exclaimed with unconcealed emotion—
‘No, I am not worthy of her! Even if my present record were clean, what could I say of my past? Such a woman should have a stainless husband! I have touched pitch, and been defiled.’