"I don't wonder at it," he answered. "You may well be ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself."
There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner. The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have known what to do. But I say again—impossible as it seems—he was, beyond all doubt, genuinely penitent for what he had said, the instant after he had said it! With all my experience of humanity, and all my practice in dealing with strange characters, I stopped mid-way between Nugent and the locked door, thoroughly puzzled.
"Do you believe me?" he asked.
"I don't understand you," I answered.
He took the key of the door out of his pocket, and put it on the table—close to the chair from which I had just risen.
"I lose my head when I talk of her, or think of her," he went on. "I would give everything I possess not to have said what I said just now. No language you can use is too strong to condemn it. The words burst out of me: if Lucilla herself had been present, I couldn't have controlled them. Go, if you like. I have no right to keep you here, after behaving as I have done. There is the key, at your service. Only think first, before you leave me. You had something to propose when you came in. You might influence me—you might shame me into behaving like an honorable man. Do as you please. It rests with you."
Which was I, a good Christian? or a contemptible fool? I went back once more to my chair, and determined to give him a last chance.
"That's kind," he said. "You encourage me; you show me that I am worth trying again. I had a generous impulse in this room, yesterday. It might have been something better than an impulse—if I had not had another temptation set straight in my way."
"What temptation?" I asked.
"Oscar's letter has told you: Oscar himself put the temptation in my way. You must have seen it."