“Your missionary seed would fall upon stony ground if you were so disposed,” he answered quickly, almost rudely. “Ellen Thornton,” he continued, ignoring the hateful title that seemed to have engulfed her body and soul for all of him, “for thirteen years fate has been circumventing our lives. I have heard your name over seas as you have heard mine, familiar to all but each other. I have loved you with hope and without it. Great wealth has been my portion, yet I would be a beggar to-night if you would but share my crust with me, with love like mine.”
Into the eyes of the woman, fierce with resolution and despair, there came tears, half of pity, half of joy—pity for his fate and hers, joy for that the love she had deemed lost and gone from their lives was here, tireless and strong as the sea, immortal and sweet as the morning, and the voice of the man whose head was bent near her own thrilled her with its music.
“During all the years of parting,” continued Morning, “I have been neither despairing nor misanthropic, but I knew that the passion of my life had glowed and burned, and—as I thought—died to ashes upon the altar whose goddess was the dark-eyed maiden whom my young manhood adored. When, less than a fortnight ago, I was able to deliver you from the awful death that madman would have inflicted upon you, my exultation had but one sting, that I had saved you for another, and for such a fate; and then, in my insane rage, I cursed myself that I had not let you die under my dizzy eyes, and so have rounded my despair.
“But I have come near to you now, our paths have crossed. O God, how I have waited for the hour! and how can I let you go? If I do, our ways will again diverge, and every remove will bring us farther apart. Do you know what this means to me? It is the dividing of my soul from my body, of my heart from my brain; it means a galvanized life, a career of eviscerated motives, a gibbering, masquerading existence, emasculate of manly and fruitful purpose, a hopeless love”—and his voice trembled and sank—“ashes and dust and nothing more.”
The baroness listened with passion tearing at her heart, while her white lips were fashioning word of wise restraint. Could she trust herself to speak? She envied in her soul the women she had known abroad, women of convictions, with uncoddled consciences, charming, virtuous women too, but without the monitor to guide the wayward thought, a sky without a polar star, a ship without a rudder, and then she recalled the burning words of the man beside her.
“I know,” said she at length, “that I owe you my life, and, in the logic of natural sequence, I should give back that which you won. But it is love’s sophistry, and, in truth, perhaps for no better reason than because I so much desire it, I dare not. One phase of your argument pricks my conscience in turn. You tell me that your usefulness must pay the penalty of my decision. Unsay those words, I entreat you”—and she leaned far toward him. “God has singled you out for a great destiny. Fulfill it. You have the world at your feet; let that suffice you for the present. I do not ask you to forget me!”—and her lips grew tremulous. “I should die if I thought you could. But work on, as you have been doing, for the sake of humanity, and wait heroically, as you have done.”
“Wait for what? for somebody to die?” broke in Morning hotly. “For somebody to die, that is the English of it. Most lives are made what they are by some woman. She may be a mother, a sister not likely. Since I received that long-lost letter—anathemas upon that circular desk,” and he pounded the “shaker” arm with his fist—“I have had but one inspiration in my projects, one question always ringing in my ears,—‘What will she think of it?’ Now I have found you only to hear from your own lips that my life is a failure, and yours a moral suicide, which I seem as helpless to prevent as I am to put a stay upon yonder waves that lash themselves to spray upon the rocks.”
“David Morning,” and her voice was firm now, “I think I owe it to you as well as myself to tell you, even with the marriage ring upon my finger, that I wish I were free from the yoke of this fateful marriage; that if I could be delivered from the body of this death, then could I mount with glad wings the great height to which your love would raise me. But I could have no weight of a crying conscience upon my feet, no wail of wounded justice behind me, and so I will bear it to the end.”
“You say, even with that marriage ring upon your finger. What care I,” said he, rising and standing before her, “for that circlet of gold upon your beautiful hand? I know it is a mockery, so do you, and but for it that hand might have been mine, and all these years have been saved to love and the heart’s gladness. What signifies the sanction of the law if you have not the sanction of your own soul? I shall not seek to dissuade you more, but one question I will ask of you, and if wealth could buy words eloquent enough to couch it in, I would surrender my possessions and delve for it again, if need be, in the depths of the earth. But truth is simple, and so I beg of you to answer from your soul, and thereafter I will do as you bid me. Do you love me, darling? do you?” and he bent over her chair.
She lifted a face radiant with beautiful light. “Dearest,” said she softly, and David Morning thrilled with delight—“dearest, I am glad that this meeting and this understanding have come to us just here, where hundreds of eyes are upon us, for, if it were otherwise, I should forget all else except my desire to comfort you, and should place my arms about your neck, and ask you to seal upon my lips your forgiveness of me for all that I have made you suffer. God help me, I do love you, and I never loved any other. You are my hero, my darling, and my heart’s delight. All these years I have loved you, until the hour of death I shall love you, and beyond the gates I shall love you forever, and forever more.”