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. But where could she lead him?
Where? And what was she to say to him? What words of cheer, of courage
and of hope? There were none. Heaven and earth were mute, unconcerned
at their me