"Let me go!" she exclaimed, without looking up.
"Remember my tenderness and pity for you," he urged.
"You have none!" she said. "Let me go."
"And you are not indifferent to me," he continued.
She lifted her face at that, and looked at him with eyes that were bright, gray, and angry as an eagle's.
"Maurice Sinclair," she said haughtily, "I thank you for one thing. Weary, and miserable, and lonely as I have been, I could not have been certain, without this test, that such a temptation would not make me hesitate. But now I know that temptation comes from within, not from without, and that infamy attracts only the infamous. I care for you, you think? My admiration and my friendships are free; but I am not a woman to tear my hands on other people's hedges. Let me tell you, sir, that I must honor a man before I can feel any affection for him. I must know that, though being human he might stumble, his proper stature is upright. If I cared for you, I could not stand here and scorn you, as I do; I should pray you to be true to your noble self, to give me back my trust in you. I should forgive you; but my forgiveness would be coals of fire on your head. If I could love a man well enough to sin for him, I should love him too well for that. Oh! it was manly, and tender, and generous of you, was it not? I had lost all but self-respect, and you would have taken that from me. But, sir, I have wings which you can never entangle!"
"You have nowhere to turn," he said.
She stood one instant as though his words were indeed true, then threw her hands upward, "I turn to God! I turn to God!" she cried out.
When she looked at him again, Mr. Sinclair stepped aside and let her pass.
But the strength that passion gives is brief, and when Margaret reached the street, she was trembling with weakness. Where to go? Not home; oh! not to that gloomy place! She walked across the Common, and thence to the Public Gardens, every step a weariness.