‘I will bring you the key,’ said Eve nervously, ‘if you will give me back my ring.’
‘Your ring!’ exclaimed Martin; ‘never! Go—call the myrmidons of justice and deliver me into their hands.’
‘I would not do that for the world,’ said Eve with tears in her eyes; ‘I will do everything that I can to help you. Indeed, last night, I got into dreadful trouble by dressing up and playing my tambourine and dancing to attract the attention of the men, whilst you were escaping from the corn-chamber. Papa was very angry and excited, and Barbara was simply—dreadful. I have been scolded and made most unhappy. Do, in pity, give me up the ring. My papa has asked for it. You have already got me into another trouble, because I had not the ring. I was obliged to promise to marry Doctor Coyshe just to pacify papa, he was so excited about the ring.’
‘What! engaged yourself to another?’
‘I was forced into it, to-day, I tell you—because I had not got the ring. Give it me. I want to get out of my engagement, and I cannot without that.’
‘And I—it is not enough that I should be hunted as a hare—my heart must be broken! Walter! where are you? Come here and listen to me. Never trust a woman. Curse the whole sex for its falseness and its selfishness. There is no constancy in this world.’ And he sighed and looked reproachfully at Eve. ‘After all I have endured and suffered—for you.’
Eve’s tears flowed. Martin’s attitude, tone of voice, were pathetic and moved her. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said, ‘but—I never gave you the ring. You snatched it from me. You are unknown to me, I am nothing to you, and you are—you are——’
‘Yes, speak out the bitter truth. I am a thief, a runaway convict, a murderer. Use every offensive epithet that occurs in your vocabulary. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. I ought to have known the sex better than to have trusted you. But I loved, I was blinded by passion. I saw an angel face, and blue eyes that promised a heaven of tenderness and truth. I saw, I loved, I trusted—and here I am, a poor castaway ship, lying ready to be broken up and plundered by wreckers. O the cruel, faithless sex! We men, with our royal trust, our splendid self-sacrifice, become a ready prey; and when we are down, the laughing heartless tyrants dance over us. When the lion was sick the ass came and kicked him. It was the last indignity the royal beast could endure, he laid his head between his paws and his heart brake. Leave me—leave me to die.’
‘O Martin!’ said Eve, quite overcome by his greatness, and the vastness of his devotion, ‘I have never hurt you, never offended you. You are like my papa, and have fancies.’
‘I have fancies. Yes, you are right, terribly right. I have had my fancies. I have lived in a delusion. I believed in the honesty of those eyes. I trusted your word——’