She almost groaned as she spoke. She was in despair. She put her hands to her head hopelessly, her eyes dilated with trouble.
"Don't go yet, Geoffrey." Then she tried to nerve herself for what she had to say. After a pause: "Geoffrey, I can say things to you now, that I could never have said before. I must speak to you fully before you go. I must leave no stone unturned. There is no one to help me, so I must look after myself in what must be said. I went away with you, Geoffrey, because I loved you." She bit her lips to stay her tears and stopped to regain a desperate fortitude. "I cared for you so much that being with you seemed right—nay more, sacred. Oh, it drags me to the dust to speak in this way! But I must. Does not my ruin give me a right to speak? The question of a girl's reticence must be put away. I am forced to do the best I can for myself. And now I say, will you stand by me?" Her head drooped and her hands hung down by her side with shame at the position she forced herself to take when she added: "Will you do me justice, Geoffrey? Will you marry me?"
Hampstead was about to speak, but she knew at once that she had asked too much, and she continued more quickly and more despairingly: "Nay, I won't ask so much. I only ask you to take me away. I am distracted. I don't know what to do. I will do anything. I will be your slave. You need not marry me—only take me away and hide me—somewhere—anywhere—for God's sake, Geoffrey, from my shame—from my disgrace."
She was on her knees before him as she said these last words. If our pleasure-loving acquaintance could have changed places with a galley-slave at that moment he would have done so gladly.
The first thing he did was to endeavor to quiet the wildness of her despair. To be surprised by any person with her on her knees before him in an agony of tears would be a circumstance difficult to explain away.
As soon as he began to talk, it seemed to him a most dastardly thing to sacrifice Margaret's life now to conceal his own wrong-doing. In the light of this idea, Nina's wealth and beauty suddenly became tawdry. Margaret's nobility and happiness suddenly seemed worth dying for. They must not be wrecked in a moment of weakness. As if dispassionately, he laid before Nina the history of their acquaintance, and also his 'other obligations.' Really, it placed him in a very awkward, not to say absurd, position. He wished to do what was right, but did not see his way at all clear. The only way was to efface himself entirely, and consider only what was due to others. Before the world he was engaged to Margaret, and had been so all along. She had his word that he would marry her. If it were only "his word" that had to be broken, that might be done. But was the happiness of Margaret's life to be cast aside? Which, of the two, was the more innocent—which, of the two, had the better right or duty to bear the brunt of the disaster?
The way he effaced his own personality in this discourse was almost picturesque. Justice blindfold, with impartial scales in her hand, was nothing to him.
Nina said no word from beginning to end. All she heard in the discourse was something to show her more and more that what she wished must be given up. It was something to know that at least she had tried every means in her power to move him—feeling that she had a helpless woman's right to do so. And as the deep, kindly tones went on they calmed her and gradually compelled her tacitly and wearily to accept his suggestion, while his ingenuity showed her the sinuous path that lay before her.
At the same time, in spite of all his arguments and her own resolutions, she could not clearly see why she should be the one to suffer instead of Margaret. Margaret had so much more strength of character to assist her. The ability to bear up under sorrow and trouble was a virtue she was ready to acknowledge to be weaker in herself than in others. The confession of this weakness, through self-pity, seemed half a virtue, even though only made to insist upon compensations.