“If you really believe that’s the one and only version, I’m afraid we shan’t come to an understanding,” he said quietly.  “You mustn’t think so badly of me as that, Sabina.”

“Your aunt does.  That’s how she sees it, being an honest woman.”

“I must try to show you you’re wrong—­in time.  For the moment I’m only concerned to do everything in my power to make your future secure and calm your mind.”

“Are you?  Then marry me.  That’s the only way you can make my future secure, and you well know it.”

“I can’t marry you.  I shall never marry.  I am very firmly convinced that to marry a woman is to do her a great injury nine times out of ten.”

“Worse than seducing her and leaving her alone in the world with a bastard child, I suppose?”

“You’re not alone in the world, and your child is my child, and I recognise the fullest obligations to you both.”

“Liar!  If you’d recognised your obligations, you wouldn’t have let it come into the world nameless and fatherless.”

She rose.

“You want everything your own way, and you think you can bend everything to your own way.  But you’ll not bend me no more.  You’ve broke me, and you’ve broke your child.  We’re rubbish—­rubbish on the world’s rubbish heap—­flung there by you.  I, that was so proud of myself!  We’ll go to the grave shamed and outcast—­failures for people to laugh at or preach over.  Your child’s doomed now.  The State and the Church both turn their backs on such as him.  You can’t make him your lawful son now.”

“I can do for him all any father can do for a son.”

“You shall do nought for him!  He’s part of me—­not you.  If you hold back from me, you hold back from him.  God’s my judge he shan’t receive a crust from your hands.  You’ve given him enough.  He’s got you to thank for a ruined life.  He shan’t have anything more from you while I can stand between.  Don’t you trouble for him.  You go on from strength to strength and the people will praise your hard work and your goodness to the workers—­such a pattern master as you’ll be.”

“May time make you feel differently, Sabina,” he answered.  “I’ve deserved this—­all of it.  I’m quite ready to grant I’ve done wrong.  But I’m not going to do more if I can help it.  I want to be your friend in the highest and worthiest sense possible.  I want to atone to you for the past, and I want to stand up for your child through thick and thin, and bear the reproach that he must be to me as long as I live.  I’ve weighed all that.  But power can challenge the indifference of the State and the cowardice of the Church.  The dirty laws will be blotted out by public opinion some day.  The child can grow up to be my son and heir, as he will be my first care and thought.  Everything that is mine can be his and yours—­”

“That’s all one now,” she said.  “He touches nothing of yours while I touch nothing of yours.  There’s only one way to bring me and the child into your life, Raymond Ironsyde, and that’s by marrying me.  Without that we’ll not acknowledge you.  I’d rather go on the streets than do it.  I’d rather tie a brick round your child’s neck and drown him like an unwanted dog than let him have comfort from you.  And God judge me if I’ll depart from that if I live to be a hundred.”