"Whatever you will," he exclaimed passionately, forgetful of all but
her power over him. "It is you who must choose."
"Yes, it is I who must choose," her face still uplifted. "Because I am
not a leaf to float on the air, my destiny decided by a breath of wind,
I must choose; yet how can I know I decide rightly? When heart and
conscience stand opposed, any decision means sacrifice and pain. I
meant those hasty words wrung out of me in shame, and spoken yonder; I
meant them then, and yet they haunt me like so many sheeted ghosts.
'Tis not their untruth, but the thought will not down that the real
cause of their utterance was not the wrong done me. It had other
birth."
"In what?"
She did not in the least hesitate to answer, her eyes clear and honest
upon his own.
"In my love for you," she answered, quietly, her cheeks reddening to
the frank avowal.
He grasped her hands, drawing her, unresisting, toward him.
"You confess this to me?"
"Yes, to you; but to you only because I trust you, because I know you
as an honorable man," she said, speaking with an earnest simplicity
irresistible. "I am not ashamed of the truth, not afraid to
acknowledge it frankly. If there be wrong in this; that wrong has
already been accomplished; the mere uttering of it cannot harm either
of us. We know the fact without words. I love you; with all my heart
I love you. I can say this to you here in the silence, yet I could not
speak it openly before the world. Why? Because such love is wrong?
Under God I do not know; only, the world would misunderstand, would
question my motives, would misjudge my faith. By the code I am not the
mistress of my heart; it has been legally surrendered. But you will
not misjudge, or question. If I could not trust, I could not love you;
I do both. Now and here, I put my hands in yours, I place my life, my
conscience, in your keeping. For good or evil, for heaven or hell, I
yield to you my faith. Tell me what I am utterly unable to decide for
myself alone: What is my duty, the duty of a woman situated as I am?"
He held her hands still, crushing them within his own, yet the color,
the hope which had brightened his face, faded. A moment the two sat
silent, their eyes meeting, searching the depths.
"Beth," he asked at last, "is this right?"
"Is what right?"
"That you should cast such a burden upon me. I told you I could not be
your conscience. All my desire, all my hope tends in one direction.
That which to you appears wrong, to me seems the only right course. My
heart responded eagerly to every word of renunciation spoken out there
in your indignation. They were just and true. They gave me courage to
believe the battle was over; that in soul and heart you were at last
free."