“I could not accept it, Everard,” she cried with kindling cheeks. “If I have no right to bear your name I have no right to your support. Don’t ask me to take it, for I can’t.”
“Yvonne, listen to me—”
“No,” she went on passionately, “I am speaking as a woman now; the time has come, and you were right in your prophecy—I would sooner die than live away from you and be supported by you. You don’t understand—it is as if I had done something shameful and you were putting me away from you. Oh, don’t speak of it,—don’t speak of it. If I am not your wife before God, I have no claims on you.”
“To hear you speak like that pains me intensely,” he said. “Do you think I have lost all regard for you?”
“If you loved me, you would not wish to part from me,” said Yvonne with her terrible logic.
They were on different planes of thought and feeling. The Canon argued, insisted, but to no purpose. Yvonne was inconvincible.
The talk continued, drifted away for a time to arrangements for the immediate future. A reply telegram came from Geraldine Vicary, to the effect that she would be with Yvonne in the morning. It was settled that Yvonne should stay with her provisionally, and that she, in order to avoid painful meetings and communications, should be Yvonne’s agent in the necessary settlement of affairs. Finally, the Canon returned to the subject of the allowance. He would settle a certain sum upon her, whether she would accept it or not. Yvonne flashed again into rebellion. The idea was hateful to her. He had no right to make her lose her self-respect.
“But it is my solemn duty that I must perform. Will nothing I can say ever make you understand?” he exclaimed at last, in exasperation.
Yvonne rose and came to where he sat, and laid her hand upon his shoulder with an action full of tenderness, and looked down upon him with her wistful dark eyes, all the more wistful for the rings beneath them.
“Don’t be angry with me—over last evening. It is good and generous of you to wish to make provision for me. But I shall be much happier to feel myself no burden upon you. And it will be so easy for me to earn my living again. I shall be much happier, really.”