y.
"Yes. Here. Your home. I can't give it to you and go away, but it is
big enough for us two. You need not be afraid. If you say so I shall
not even look at you. Remember that grey head of which you have been
thinking night and day. Where is it going to rest? Where else if not
here, where nothing evil can touch it. Don't you understand that I
won't let you buy shelter from me at the cost of your very soul. I
won't. You are too much part of me. I have, found myself since I came
upon you and I would rather sell my own soul to the devil than let you
go out of my keeping. But I must have the right."
He went away brusquely to shut the door leading on deck and came back
the whole length of the cabin repeating:
"I must have the legal right. Are you ashamed of letting people think
you are my wife?"
He opened his arms as if to clasp her to his breast but mastered the
impulse and shook his clenched hands at her, repeating: "I must have the
right if only for your father's sake. I must have the right. Where
would you take him? To that infernal cardboard box-maker. I don't know
what keeps me from hunting him up in his virtuous home and bashing his
head in. I can't bear the thought. Listen to me, Flora! Do you hear
what I am saying to you? You are not so proud that you can't understand
that I as a man have my pride too?"
He saw a tear glide down her white cheek from under each lowered eyelid.
Then, abruptly, she walked out of the cabin. He stood for a moment,
concentrated, reckoning his own strength, interrogating his heart,
before he followed her hastily. Already she had reached the wharf.
At the sound of his pursuing footsteps her strength failed her. Where
could she escape from this? From this new perfidy of life taking upon
itself the form of magnanimity. His very voice was changed. The
sustaining whirlwind had let her down, to stumble on again, weakened by
the fresh stab, bereft of moral support which is wanted in life more
than all the charities of material help. She had never had it. Never.
Not from the Fynes. But where to go? Oh yes, this dock--a placid sheet
of water close at hand. But there was that old man with whom she had
walked hand in hand on the parade by the sea. She seemed to see him
coming to meet her, pitiful, a little greyer, with an appealing look and
an extended, tremulous arm. It was for her now to take the hand of that
wronged man more helpless than a child. Bu
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