But he shrank from her touch, and uttering a cry of agony sank into a chair, and hid his face in his hands.
‘Ambrose!’ she murmured, bending over him.
‘Do not touch me,’ he cried; ‘I have more to tell you yet—something that must break the last bond uniting us together, and degrade me for ever in your eyes. Alma, do not pity me; your pity tortures and destroys me, for I do not deserve it—I am a villain! Listen, then!
I betrayed you wilfully, diabolically; for when I went through the marriage ceremony with you I knew that Mary Goodwin was still alive!’
‘You knew it!—and, knowing it, you——’
She paused in horror, unable to complete the sentence.
‘I knew it, for I had seen her with my own eyes—so long ago as when I was vicar of Fensea. You remember my visit to London; you remember my trouble then, and you attributed it to my struggle with the Church authorities. That was the beginning of my fall; I was a coward and a liar from that hour; for I had met and spoken with my first wife.’
She shrank away from him now, indeed. The last remnant of his old nobility had fallen from him, leaving him utterly contemptible and ignoble.
‘Afterwards,’ he continued, ‘I was like a man for whose soul the angels of light and darkness struggle. You saw my anguish, but little guessed its cause. I had tried to fly from temptation. I went abroad; even there, your heavenly kindness reached me, and I was drawn back to your side. Then for a time I forgot everything, in the pride of intellect and newly acquired success. By accident, I heard the woman had gone abroad; and I knew well, or at least I believed, that she would never cross my path again. My love for you grew hourly; and I saw that you were unhappy, so long as our lives were passed asunder. Then in an evil moment I turned to my creed for inspiration. I did not turn to God, for I had almost ceased to believe in Him; but I sought justification from my conscience, which the spirit of evil had already warped. I reasoned with myself; I persuaded myself that I had been a martyr, that I owed the woman no faith, that I was still morally free. I examined the laws of marriage, and, the wish being father to the thought, found in them only folly, injustice, and superstition. I said to myself, “She and I are already divorced by her own innumerable acts of infamy;” I asked myself, “Shall I live on a perpetual bondslave to a form which I despise, to a creature who is utterly unworthy?” Coward that I was, I yielded, forgetting that no happiness can be upbuilt upon a lie. And see how I am punished! I have lost you for ever; I have lost my soul alive! I, who should have been your Instructor in all things holy, have been your guide in all things evil. I have brought the curse of heaven upon myself. I have put out my last strength in wickedness, and brought the roof of the temple down upon my head.’
In this manner his words flowed on, in a wild stream of sorrowful self-reproach. It seemed, indeed, that he found a relief in denouncing himself as infamous, and in prostrating himself, as it were, under the heel of the woman he had wronged.