"This is plain talk, Astra," said Dr. Remy, growing pale with anger and mortification. "If you were not a woman, it would be easier to answer it."
"It is not only plain talk, but plain sight," replied Astra. "The scales have fallen from my eyes; at last, I see you as you are. The most that can be said for you, as well as in excuse for my late infatuation (for I would not seem altogether despicable in my own eyes), is that great and rich capabilities have been miserably perverted, in your person. A grand soul has somehow been strangled within you. Some hidden canker—beginning I know not when nor where, but to which your surgeon's knowledge ought to have impelled you long ago to put the surgeon's knife—has slowly eaten out everything that was sound and good, in your moral system, and left nothing but rottenness. And it is now too late for remedy. If it were not,—if there were any hope that I could help to save you, by clinging to you,—I think I have the strength and courage to do it. As it is, I should only corrupt myself. Indeed, I fear it will be long ere I get rid of the virus of doubt and captiousness, which, I find, you have already introduced into my mind; and of which that figure" (she pointed to the statue of clay) "is the legitimate outcome. You have given a bias to my mode of thought, which has already shaken my faith to its foundations,—and might, in time (but for the scathing commentary of your life upon your opinions), have destroyed it. Leave me now. We have done with each other."
Perhaps Dr. Remy's good angel, absent from his side for many years, hovered, at that moment, above his head, with a wistful—almost a hopeful—face. For, at last, the strong man was visibly affected. Some chance word of Astra's had found a joint in his iron armor, and penetrated to the living flesh. His lip trembled,—it may have been with an unshaped prayer to Astra to make that effort to save him, of which she had declared herself capable,—it may have been with a sudden perception of the barrenness of his life, and the valuelessness of its ends, disposing him, for a moment, to try whether any richer realities were to be reaped from an unselfish human affection and an unquestioning heavenly faith.
But not thus easily and quickly was the whole bent of a life to be changed, not thus the holding of the cords of evil to be loosed! Suddenly, between him and Astra, rose a vision of Bergan Hall, with its immense revenues, its ancient and aristocratic prestige, the vast power and influence that it would impart to capable hands, the abundant means and leisure that it would allow for scientific pursuits. For, if Doctor Remy lived for anything besides himself, it was for science. He had managed to persuade himself that the interests of the two were identical. He had embodied his selfishness, as it were, in a theory; for the development, confirmation, and proclamation, of which, he believed that he desired leisure and wealth, far more than for himself; and through which he meant to be a benefactor to his race, as well as to wreathe his own name with undying laurels. On the one hand, then, was this wide prospect of wealth, freedom, usefulness, and fame; on the other, Astra, and a life of restrictions and limitations, narrowed down to the daily necessity of daily bread. Quickly he made his choice. The angel spread his white wings, and flew upward,—never to return!
Doctor Remy turned to Astra, and held out his hand. "Let us part friends," said he.
"Not so," replied Astra; "let us part—as we are to remain—strangers. No need to mock the sacred past with the commonplace civilities of ordinary intercourse. The relation that once existed between us is simply dead, not changed into something else."
"As you will," returned Doctor Remy, after a pause. "At least let me wish you a short mourning, and a bright thereafter. Adieu."
He went out as he spoke, closing the door behind him. In his excitement, he used more force than he was aware of, and it fell to with a clangor that reverberated loudly through the large, uncarpeted room, and jarred painfully upon Astra's nerves. She shivered, and her eyes fell upon the clay figure. Apparently, it was trembling with sympathetic emotion; it even bent toward her, as if suddenly endued with life; for one moment, the old fable of Pygmalion seemed coming true, in her modern experience. Then, the limbs gave way, the trunk fell forward, down went Bearer and Child together, the faces of each giving her one last, distorted look of malign meaning, ere they crushed into fragments on the platform.
"It is not the only ruin that he has left behind him," murmured Astra to herself, with a sad and bitter smile.
In another moment, she too began to sink. The long fever of suspense was ended; the excitement that had carried her through the late trying interview was over; the inevitable time of reaction and depression had come. The thought of the terrible blank left in her heart and life, of the woful loss of affection, faith, and hope, that she had suffered, of the miserable waste in her past, and of the chaotic emptiness in her future, came over her with awful force. Slowly she sank, as if an invisible weight were pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned her head on the ruins of her statue, and shook with sobs of tearless agony.