nother. By your own confession you are part Eben Tollman's and part
mine. He holds only a pallid and empty allegiance: I hold, and held
first, your heart, a splendid, vital heart.... I can offer you life ...
and you belong to me!"

"Then you mean--that I must fight you, too--as well as myself?"

"I mean that you must, if that's the only way you can find yourself.
I've asked you to divorce him--and let me be your husband. You refuse,
but I have the right to take back what has been stolen from me, and I
mean to do it. From this moment on I am avowedly and openly your
lover--with all that that means. You have challenged me to attack. I
mean to attack."

Conscience drew back a step and her hands came up to her bosom as she
regarded him, at first with unbelief, and then with an anger that made
her seem an incarnation of warring principle.

"I sought the wrong ally," was all she said, but she said it with such a
cold ring of contempt that the man's answer broke out almost fiercely.

"You don't know it, Conscience, but you are still the deluded daughter
of men who burned witches in the name of God; people who could sing
psalms through their noses, but couldn't see beyond them; men who
exalted a dreary bigotry above all else. I inherited traditions as well
as you. My fathers have committed homicide on the field of honor and put
woman on a pedestal. They made of her a being, half-angel and half-toy,
but I refuse to be bound by their outworn ideas.

"Nowadays we prate less priggishly about honor because it is no longer a
word with a single meaning." He paused a moment, then went on in a
climax of vehemence. "From this moment on your New England code and my
inherited chivalry may be hanged on the same gibbet! This revered temple
of your marriage is just as sacred to me as a joss house--and I mean to
invade it--and break its false idols--if I can!"

Conscience stood for a brief space with her hands clenched on the rail
that guarded the edge of the float. She was almost hypnotically
conscious of his eyes burning with a sort of wildness into her own, but
when she spoke it was in a manner regally unafraid--even disdainful.

"You are quite welcome to break them if you can," she declared, and the
next moment he saw her going with a superbly firm carriage up the
path--and found himself alone and tremendously shaken.

CHAPTER XXVI

For the best part of an hour Stuart sat confusedly looking out across
the cove. Then with