“Then let me stop you.  My weak hand is strong enough for that.  Remain here, dear Claudia.  Let me go downstairs and report that you are ill, as indeed and in truth you are.  The marriage can be delayed, and then you can have an explanation with the viscount, and break it off altogether.”

“And break my plighted faith!  Is that your advice, young moralist?”

“There was no faith in your plighted word, Claudia.  It was very wrong to promise to marry a man you could not love; but it would be criminal to keep such a promise.  Speak candidly to his lordship, Claudia, and ask him to release you from your engagement.  My word on it he will do it.”

“Of course, and make me the town talk for the delight of all who envy me.”

“Better be that than an unloving wife.”

“No, Bee!  I must fulfill my destiny.  And, besides, I never thought of turning from it.  I am in the power of the whirlpool or the demon.”

“It is the demon—­the demon that is carrying you down into this whirlpool.  And the name of the demon is Ambition, Claudia; and the name of the whirlpool is Ruin.”

“Yes! it is ambition that possesses my soul.  None other but the sins by which angels fell would have power to draw my soul down from heaven—­for heaven was possible to me, once!” And with these last words she melted into tears and wept as if the fountains of her heart were broken up and gushing through her eyes.

“Yes,” she repeated in the pauses of her weeping.  “Heaven was possible for me once!  Never more, oh, never, never more!  Filled with the ambition of Lucifer I have cast myself out of that heaven.  But alas! alas!  I have Lucifer’s ambition without his strength to suffer.”

“Claudia, dear Claudia!”

“Do not speak to me.  Let me speak, for I must speak, or die!  It is not only that I do not love this viscount, but, oh, Bee!” she wailed in the prolonged tones of unutterable woe, “I love another!  I love Ishmael!”

There was a sudden movement and a fall.

“You push me from you!  Oh, cruel friend!  Let me lay my head upon your lap again, Bee, and sob out all this anguish here.  I must, or my heart will burst.  I love Ishmael!  His love is the heaven of heavens from which Ambition has cast me down.  I love Ishmael!  Oh, how much, my reason, utterly overthrown, may some time betray to the world!  This love fills my soul.  Oh, more than that, it is greater than my soul; it goes beyond it, into infinitude!  There is light, warmth, and life where Ishmael is; darkness, coldness, and death where he is not!  To meet his eyes,—­those beautiful, dark, luminous eyes, that seem like inlets to some perfect inner world of wisdom, love, and pure joy; or to lay my hand in his, and feel that soft, strong, elastic hand close upon mine,—­gives me a moment of such measureless content, such perfect assurance of peace, that for the time I forget all the sin and horror that envelopes and curses my life.  But to be his beloved wife—­oh, Bee!  I cannot imagine in the life of heaven a diviner happiness!”