His black eyes seemed to flash upon me defiantly, and his face had reassumed that expression which was sufficient index to the unscrupulousness of his character.
“Let me pass!” I cried roughly, in my headlong haste. “I desire to see my wife.”
“You shall not enter?” he answered, in a voice tremulous with an excitement which he strove in vain to control.
“She is in distress. I heard her scream. It is my duty, both as a doctor and as her husband, to be at her side.”
“Duty?” he sneered. “My dear sir, what is duty to a man who will sell himself for a handful of banknotes?”
“I yielded to your accursed temptation, it is true!” I cried fiercely. “But human feeling is not entirely dead in my heart, as it is in yours. Thank God that my hands are still unsullied!”
He laughed—the same harsh, discordant laugh that had escaped him when, below in the library, I had refused to accept the vile condition of the compact.
He stood there barring my passage to that room wherein lay the unknown woman who had been so strangely united to me. Whoever she was, I was resolved to rescue her. Mystery surrounded her—mystery that I resolved at all hazards to penetrate.
“You were in want of money, and I offered it to you,” the Tempter answered coldly. “You have refused, and the matter is ended.”
“I think not,” I said warmly. “You will hear something more of this night’s work.”