“I did what I could in other ways and it was all in vain. Time after time I tried to save you from these dangers, but you would not listen. I was ready for any change, any sacrifice. Once I would have given up all the world for you, Glory—you know that quite well—friends, kinsmen, country, everything, even my work and my duty, and, but for the grace of God, God himself!”
But his tenderness broke again into a headlong torrent of reproach. “You failed me, didn't you? At the last moment, too—the very last! Not content with the suicide of your own soul, you must attempt to murder the soul of another. Do you know what that is? That is the unpardonable sin! You are crying, aren't you? Why are you crying?” But even while he said this something told him that all he was waiting for was that her beautiful eyes should be raised and their splendid light flash upon him again.
“But that is all over now. It was a blunder, and the breach between us is irreparable. I am better as I am—far, far better. Without friends or kin or country, consecrated for life, cut off from the world, separate, alone!”
She knew that her moment had come, and that she must vanquish this man and turn him from his purpose, whatever it was, by the only weapon a woman could use—his love of her. “I do not deny that you have a right to be angry with me,” she said, “but don't think that I have not given up something too. At the time you speak of, when I chose this life and refused to go with you to the South Seas, I sacrificed a good deal—I sacrificed love. Do you think I didn't realize what that meant? That whatever the pleasure and delight my art might bring me, and the flattery, and the fame, and the applause, there were joys I was never to know—the happiness that every poor woman may feel, though she isn't clever at all, and the world knows nothing about her—the happiness of being a wife and a mother, and of holding her place in life, however humble she is and simple and unknown, and of linking the generations each to each. And, though the world has been so good to me, do you think I have ever ceased to regret that? Do you think I don't remember it sometimes when the house rises at me, or when I am coming home, or perhaps when I awake in the middle of the night? And notwithstanding all this success with which the world has crowned me, do you think I don't hunger sometimes for what success can never buy—the love of a good man who would love me with all his soul and his strength and everything that is his?”
Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered: “I would rather die a thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory.... But God's will is his will!” he added, quivering and trembling. The compulsion of a great passion was drawing him, but he struggled hard against it. “And then this success—you cling to it nevertheless!” he cried, with a forced laugh.
“Yes, I cling to it,” she said, wiping away the tears that had begun to fall. “I can not give it up, I can not, I can not!”
“Then what is the worth of your repentance?”
“It is not repentance—it is what you said it was—in this room—long ago.... We are of different natures, John—that is the real trouble between us, now and always has been. But whether we like it or not, our lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can't do without each other. God makes men and women like that sometimes.”
There was a piteous smile on his face. “I never doubted your feeling for me, Glory. No, not even when you hurt me most.”
“And if God made us so——”