white heat of an accusing passion. In return she began to forget
her own resolve to bear herself gently.

"You don't remember," she cried, "that what divided us was
your--your--incapacity to put the human pity first; to think of the
surrounding circumstances--of the debt that you and I and everybody like
us owe to a man like Hurd--to one who had been stunted and starved by
life as he had been."

Her lip began to tremble.

"Then it comes to this," he said steadily, "that if I had been a poor
man, you would have allowed me my conscience--my judgment of right and
wrong--in such a matter. You would have let me remember that I was a
citizen, and that pity is only one side of justice! You would have let
me plead that Hurd's sin was not against me, but against the community,
and that in determining whether to do what you wished or no, I must
think of the community and its good before even I thought of pleasing
you. If I had possessed no more than Hurd, all this would have been
permitted me; but because of Maxwell Court--because of my _money_,"--she
shrank before the accent of the word--"you refused me the commonest
moral rights. _My_ scruple, _my_ feeling, were nothing to you. Your
pride was engaged as well as your pity, and I must give way. Marcella!
you talk of justice--you talk of equality--is the only man who can get
neither at your hands--the man whom you promised to marry!"

His voice dwelt on that last word, dwelt and broke. He leant over her in
his roused strength, and tried to take her hand. But she moved away from
him with a cry.

"It is no use! Oh, don't--don't! It may be all true. I was vain, I dare
say, and unjust, and hard. But don't you see--don't you understand--if
we _could_ take such different views of such a case--if it could divide
us so deeply--what chance would there be if we were married? I ought
never--never--to have said 'Yes' to you--even as I was then. But _now_,"
she turned to him slowly, "can't you see it for yourself? I am a changed
creature. Certain things in me are gone--_gone_--and instead there is a
fire--something driving, tormenting--which must burn its way out. When I
think of what I liked so much when you asked me to marry you--being
rich, and having beautiful things, and dresses, and jewels, and
servants, and power--social power--above all _that_--I feel sick and
choked. I couldn't breathe now in a house like Maxwell Court. The poor
have come to mean to me the only people who really