"Did it mean that you were to be my wife, that I was to be your
husband?"
"I thought so."
"And you came to think otherwise--"
"How could it be, oh, how could it be?" I cried out wildly, the dumb
misery finding expression at last. "How could it be when you are my
mother's husband--"
"Stop! Not here and now. I will not hear that--not here, where I
found her dead in this basement; not now, when I have come to find her
child. Listen to me. Answer me, as if before the judgment seat of
your truest womanhood and our common humanity. Is she a wife who never
loves the man who loves her, and is married to her in the law? Answer
me."
"No."
"Is he a husband who never receives the pledge of love from the woman
he loves, and to whom he is married in the law? Answer me again."
"No."
"Can words merely, the 'I promise', the 'I take', make marriage in its
truest sense? Tell me."
"No."
"Was the woman who never loved me, my wife in any true sense for all
the spoken words?"
"No," I answered again, but my voice faltered.
"Was the man who loved her, her husband simply by reason of those few
spoken words?"
"No--but--"
"Yes, I know what you would say; the words, at least, were spoken that
made us before the world man and wife in the law--but how about the
'before God'?"
I could not answer. The man who was cross-questioning me was trying to
get at the truth as I saw it.
"The law can be put aside, and I put it aside; I was divorced from her.
But what difference, except to you, does that make? Marcia Farrell, I
was never your mother's husband. Had I been, had I taken her once in
my arms as wife, can you think for one moment that I would have stayed
in the manor, continued in your presence--watching, waiting, longing
for some sign of love for me on your part? You cannot think it--it is
not possible."
His voice shook with passion, with indignation. He bent to me.
"Tell me, in mercy tell me, what stands between us two? Speak out now
from the depths of your very soul. Lay aside fear; there is nothing to
fear, believe me. I am fighting now not only for my life, but for
yours which is dearer to me than my own. Speak."