Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began softly and sweetly trying to explain herself. “John, dear John, if you see me with certain people and in certain places you must not think from that——”
But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words. “I can't think of it at all, Glory. When I look ahead I see nothing but shame and misery and degradation for you in the future. That man is destroying you body and soul. He is leading you on to the devil and hell and damnation, and I can not stand by and see it done!”
“Believe me, John, you are mistaken, quite mistaken.” But, with a look of sombre fury, he cried, “Can you deny it?”
“I can protect and care for myself, John.”
“With that man's words in your ears, still can you deny it?”
Suddenly she remembered Drake's last whisper as she got into the hansom, and she covered her face with her hands.
“You can't! It is the truth! The man is following you to ruin you, and you know it. You've known it from the first, therefore you deserve all that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide of the soul? What is the crime of the poor broken creature who only chooses death and the grave before starvation or shame, compared to the sin of the wretched woman who murders her soul for sake of the lusts and vanities of the world? The law of man may punish, the one, but the vengeance of God is waiting for the other.”
She was crying behind her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and fro across the room.
“O Glory, Glory! Can't you understand what it is to me to be the messenger of God's judgment?”
She gasped for breath, and what had been a vague surmise became a certainty—thinking he was God's avenger, yet with nothing but a poor spasm of jealousy in his heart, he had come with a fearful purpose to perform.