"You did!" interrupted Astra, with indignation that she could no longer repress. "Instead of sending these foul slanders back down the throats which invented them, you—" She stopped, choked by her bitter sense of indignity and wrong.
"—took the pains to verify them," rejoined Doctor Remy, coolly finishing her sentence. "Every accusation was established in the mouths of several witnesses. Arling himself had spoken frankly, as well as lightly, of his engagement, to more than one person."
"It is false, and you know it!" exclaimed Astra. "Mr. Arling is incapable of such baseness."
"Never mind defending him," said Doctor Remy, with a curl of the lip. "What have you to say for yourself?"
Astra walked to the door, and flung it wide open. "I have that to say," she replied, turning upon him with a look of ineffable scorn, and a queenly gesture of dismissal. "Go!"
Doctor Remy stood for a moment irresolute, with an unwonted flush of shame rising to his brow. The climax had not only come sooner than he anticipated, but in an unexpectedly embarrassing shape,—a shape that gave him a sudden, startling perception of the vileness of the task which he had set himself to do. Naturally, he was inclined to be angry with Astra for the action to which he owed this moment of self-recognition; yet, on the whole, it was the most bewitching thing that he had ever seen her do. Never had she attracted him so strongly as while she thus stood pointing him to the door. Her free and noble attitude, the wonderful vividness of her expression, the maidenly dignity of her tacit refusal to descend for one moment to his level, and discuss with him the points that he had raised, thrilled him with involuntary admiration. It irked him to think that he must needs give her up. Was there really no way to keep her, and at the same time win Bergan Hall? He sent his thoughts back over the road which they had trodden so often, during the past fortnight, and decided once more that the risk was too great. He must persevere in the course upon which he had entered. Nor did a little present mortification matter, in comparison with hopeful progress. Astra was only helping him forward in the way that he wished to go. How easily the affections and passions of others became the puppets of his will!
Nevertheless, it was not without a softened, almost regretful, tone that he finally said,—"If I go, Astra, you understand that our engagement is at an end."
"Our engagement!" repeated Astra, looking at him with a kind of scornful amaze. "How dare you insult me thus? I was never engaged to you,—never!"
Doctor Remy stood aghast. For one moment, he believed that her senses were taking leave of her.
"Never!" repeated Astra, with proud emphasis. "I was engaged," she went on, after a moment, in an altered and tremulous tone, "to a MAN,—a calm, wise, noble man,—not a monster, nor a piece of mechanism. I was engaged to an earnest seeker after truth, a courageous grappler with problems that other men shunned, an honest speaker of his own thoughts and moulder of his own opinions,—a man who, though he might be temporarily led astray by the very excess of his virtues of candor, boldness, and integrity, would be sure to come right in the end. He is dead,—or he never lived, except in my imagination,—requiescat in pace. But to you,—a body without a soul, an intellect without a heart, a will without a faith, a kind of human beast of prey, intent on nothing but the gratification of his own selfish ends,—to you I was never pledged. I would as soon have bound myself to a corpse, or a calculating machine."