"Ah, don't call me that!" she rejoined passionately. "Don't make me hate my own name! Better a hundred times an open foe——"
"Have I ever been anything but an open foe?" he returned. "On this point at any rate?"
She swept the remonstrance by. "Better," she cried vehemently, "far better a fate we know, a lot we understand; far better freedom and poverty, than to live thus—yesterday a laughing-stock, to-day slaves; yesterday false to our vows, to-day false to our friends! Oh, there must be an end! There——"
She choked on the word, and her distress moved Asgill to do a strange thing. He had listened to her with an admiration that for the time purified the man, lifted him above selfishness, put the desire to triumph far from him. Now he stepped forward. "I would rather never cross this threshold again," he cried; "never, ay, believe me, I would rather never see you again, than give you this pain! I go, dear lady, I go! And do not let one thought of me trouble or distress you! Let this gentleman have his way. I do not understand. I do not ask to understand, how he holds you, or constrains you. But I shall be silent."
He seemed to the onlookers as much raised above himself as Colonel John seemed depressed below himself. There could be no doubt with whom the victory lay: with whom the magnanimity. Asgill stood erect, almost beatified, a Saint George, a knight of chivalry. Colonel Sullivan showed smaller to the eye, stood bowed and grey-faced, a man beaten and visibly beaten.
But as Asgill turned on his heel Flavia found her voice. "Do not go!" she cried impulsively. "There must be an end! There must be an end of this!"
But Asgill insisted. He saw that to go, to submit himself to the sway against which she revolted was to impress himself upon her mind, was to commend himself to her a hundred times more seriously than if he stayed. And he persisted. "No," he said; "permit me to go." He stepped forward and, with a grace borrowed for the occasion, and with lips that trembled at his daring, he raised and kissed her hand. "Permit me to go, dear lady. I would rather banish myself a hundred times than bring ill into this house or differences into this family."
"Flavia!" Colonel Sullivan said, finding his voice at last, "hear first, I am begging you, what I have to say! Hear it, since against my will the matter has been brought to your knowledge."
"That last I can believe!" she cried spitefully. "But for hearing, I choose the part this gentleman has chosen—to go from your presence. What?" looking at the Colonel with white cheeks and flaming eyes—Asgill had turned to go from the room—"has it come to this? That we must seek your leave to live, to breathe, to have a guest, to eat and sleep, and perhaps to die? Then I say—then I say, if this be so, we have no choice but to go. This is no place for us!"
"Flavia!"