"Oh! Harry, as if I mind. Everything that I have is yours. When I gave
you myself I gave all. Take--use--lose it all. As you think, I should
never feel reproach, far less utter a word of blame. Dearest Harry,
if that is all--"
"No; it is the knowledge that you will not even feel reproach that is
my constant accuser. At my death you will get all back again. But I am
not old; I may live for many, many years to come. How can I wait for my
own death when I can repair this wickedness by a single stroke?"
"But by another wickedness--and worse."
"No--not another crime. Remember that this money is mine. It will come
to my heirs some day, as surely as to-morrow's sun will rise. Sooner or
later it will be mine; I will make it sooner, that is all. The
Insurance Company will lose nothing but the paltry interest for the
remainder of my life. My dear, if it is disgraceful to do this I will
endure disgrace. It is easier to bear that than constant self-reproach
which I feel when I think of you and the losses I have inflicted upon
you."
Again he folded her in his arms; he knelt before her; he wept over her.
Carried out of herself by this passion, Iris made no more resistance.
"Is it--is it," she asked timidly, "too late to draw back?"
"It is too late," he replied, thinking of the dead man below. "It is
too late. All is completed."
"My poor Harry! What shall we do? How shall we live? How shall we
contrive never to be found out?"
She would not leave him, then. She accepted the situation. He was
amazed at the readiness with which she fell; but he did not understand
how she was ready to cling to him, for better for worse, through worse
evils than this; nor could he understand how things formerly impossible
to her had been rendered possible by the subtle deterioration of the
moral nature, when a woman of lofty mind at the beginning loves and is
united to a man of lower nature and coarser fibre than herself. Only a
few months before, Iris would have swept aside these sophistrics with
swift and resolute hand. Now she accepted them.
"You have fallen into the doctor's hands, dear," she said. "Pray Heaven
it brings us not into worse evils! What can I say? it is through love
of your wife--through love of your wife--oh! husband!" she threw
herself into his arms, and forgave everything and accepted everything.
Henceforth she would be--though this she knew not--the willing
instrument of the two conspirators.