"I have done my best to keep her."
"I know you have," he answered, quickly; "and now you must give me authority over her--the authority of a husband. I am willing to put the whole matter to the test this night. She knows that I love her, and I think she honors and respects me--perhaps she may already love me, unworthy as I am."
The mother began now to tremble. "I don't know, Anthony; she thought--we all understood--that you--"
"I know what you mean," he irritably exclaimed. "Why will you persist in misreading me? I am not disloyal to Adele. Can't you see that my devotion for her remains, and that my regard for Viola is no treason to the dead? Adele will understand how vital, how necessary, Viola is to me, for does she not know that I could not even communicate with her if Viola went away? I do not love Viola as a boy loves, but as a man who understands himself and her--as one who understands her duties. It is a different love, but it is just as true, and it is high and holy. Without her I would have gone mad. She saved me from despair. Her union with me will make her an evangel to the earth-bound millions."
Flattered as well as awed by this disclosure of her daughter's power, the mother consented to his demand. Marriage with him would safe-harbor Viola, would establish her in life, and would also carry forward the work which she, too, considered of greater importance than any other concern of her life.
"I don't know her mind, Anthony," she said, after a silence. "She worries and puzzles me lately by her opposition to all our plans; but I don't think she is attached to any of the young men she knows. Still, she is not one to speak of such things. And if she consents--"
"When she comes, leave her to me," answered he, with returning confidence. Deep in the man's egotistic soul lay the thought, "I know why this girl is restless and uneasy--I know why she seeks afar off; it is because she thinks me indissolubly bound to Adele. When she finds that I love her, that I want her for my wife, she will come--her vague rebellions will cease. Her longings will close round me--"
When the door opened and Viola stepped into the room, so tall, so vivid, so tingling with life, the very force of his desire rendered Clarke outwardly humble, drove him to a feigning of sadness and to the voicing of desolate weakness. After the mother left them alone he began speaking in a low voice with deep-dropping cadences.