“Base?” he echoed, offended.

“Yes—­base.  That a man should care for a woman whom he thinks to be bad is comprehensible; that he should wish to make her his wife is credible; that he should hope to lift her out of her condition is admirable; but that he should descend from his own high plane to stay on hers is despicably weak; while to drag down with him a girl in the very flower of her purity is a crime without a name.”

The dark flush showed how quickly his haughty spirit responded to the flicker of the lash.

“If you choose to put that interpretation of my words—­” he began, indignantly.

“I don’t; but it’s the interpretation they deserve.  There’s almost no indignity that can be uttered which you haven’t heaped upon me; and of them all this last is the hardest to be borne.  I bear it; I forgive it; because it convinces me of what I’ve been afraid of all along—­that I’m a woman who throws some sort of evil influence over men.  Even you are not exempt from it—­even you!  Oh, Derek, go away from me!  If you won’t do it for your own sake, do it for Dorothea’s.  I won’t do battle with Bienville’s accusations now.  Perhaps I may never do battle with them at all.  What does it matter whether he tells the truth or lies?  The pressing thing just now is that you should be saved—­”

“Thank you; I can take care of myself.  Let’s have no more fine splitting of moral hairs.  Let us settle the thing, and be done with it.  There’s one big fact before us, and only one.  You can’t do without me; I can’t do without you.  It’s a crisis at which we’ve the right to think only of ourselves and thrust every one else outside.”

“Wait!” she cried, as he advanced once more upon her.  “Wait!  Let me tell you something.  You mustn’t be hard on me for saying it.  You asked just now for my answer to your question of three months ago.  My answer is—­”

“Diane!” he said, lifting his hand in warning.  “Be careful.  Don’t speak in a hurry.  I’m not in a mood to plead or argue any longer.  What you say now will be—­the irrevocable word.”

“I know it.  It will not only be the irrevocable word, but the last word.  Derek, I see you as you are, a strong, simple, honest man.  I admire you; I esteem you; I honor you; I’m grateful to you as a woman is rarely grateful to a man.  And yet I’d rather be all you think me; I’d rather earn my bread as desperate women do earn it than be your wife.”

They looked at each other long and steadily.  When he spoke, his words were those she had invited, but they made her gasp as one gasps at that which suddenly takes one’s breath.

“As you will,” he said, briefly.

XV

As the pivot of events, Miss Lucilla van Tromp was beginning to feel the responsibilities of her position.  Only a woman with an inexhaustible heart could have met as she did the demands for sympathy, of various shades, made by the chief participants in the drama; while there was one phase of the action which called for a heroic display of conscience.