"Are you the slave of your unknown god?"
"We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is
no freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears a
lamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens must
happen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised no
hand."
"Then," Ethel retorted, eagerly, "if I attempted to wrest your victim
from you, I should also be the tool of your god?"
"Assuredly. But I am his chosen."
"Can you--can you not set him free?"
"I need him--a little longer. Then he is yours."
"But can you not, if I beg you again on my knees, at least loosen his
chains before he is utterly ruined?"
"It is beyond my power. If I could not rescue you, whom I loved, what in
heaven or on earth can save him from his fate? Besides, he will not be
utterly ruined. It is only a part of him that I absorb. In his soul are
chords that I have not touched. They may vibrate one day, when he has
gathered new strength. You, too, would have spared yourself much pain
had you striven to attain success in different fields--not where I had
garnered the harvest of a lifetime. It is only a portion of his talent
that I take from him. The rest I cannot harm. Why should he bury that
remainder?"
His eyes strayed through the window to the firmament, as if to say that
words could no more bend his indomitable will than alter the changeless
course of the stars.
Ethel had half-forgotten the wrong she herself had suffered at his
hands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling
madman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions.
But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginald
crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding,
as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upon
a fly.
Love, all conquering love, welled up in her. She would fight for Ernest
as a tiger cat fights for its young. She would place herself in the way
of the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations, and save, at
any cost, the brilliant boy who did not love her.