The girl raised her head and shrugged her shoulders slightly as though she were cold.  “Father,” she said, wearily, “ask him to go away.  Why does he stay?  Ask him to go away.”

Latimer stopped and took a step back as though some one had struck him, and then stood silent with his face flushed and his eyes flashing.  It was not in answer to anything that they said that he spoke, but to their attitude and what it suggested.  “You stand there,” he began, “you two stand there as though I were something unclean, as though I had committed some crime.  You look at me as though I were on trial for murder or worse.  Both of you together against me.  What have I done?  What difference is there?  You loved me a half-hour ago, Ellen; you said you did.  I know you loved me; and you, sir,” he added, more quietly, “treated me like a friend.  Has anything come since then to change me or you?  Be fair to me, be sensible.  What is the use of this?  It is a silly, needless, horrible mistake.  You know I love you, Ellen; love you better than all the world.  I don’t have to tell you that; you know it, you can see and feel it.  It does not need to be said; words can’t make it any truer.  You have confused yourselves and stultified yourselves with this trick, this test by hypothetical conditions, by considering what is not real or possible.  It is simple enough; it is plain enough.  You know I love you, Ellen, and you only, and that is all there is to it, and all that there is of any consequence in the world to me.  The matter stops there; that is all there is for you to consider.  Answer me, Ellen, speak to me.  Tell me that you believe me.”

He stopped and moved a step toward her, but as he did so, the girl, still without looking up, drew herself nearer to her father and shrank more closely into his arms; but the father’s face was troubled and doubtful, and he regarded the younger man with a look of the most anxious scrutiny.  Latimer did not regard this.  Their hands were raised against him as far as he could understand, and he broke forth again proudly, and with a defiant indignation: 

“What right have you to judge me?” he began; “what do you know of what I have suffered, and endured, and overcome?  How can you know what I have had to give up and put away from me?  It’s easy enough for you to draw your skirts around you, but what can a woman bred as you have been bred know of what I’ve had to fight against and keep under and cut away?  It was an easy, beautiful idyl to you; your love came to you only when it should have come, and for a man who was good and worthy, and distinctly eligible—­I don’t mean that; forgive me, Ellen, but you drive me beside myself.  But he is good and he believes himself worthy, and I say that myself before you both.  But I am only worthy and only good because of that other love that I put away when it became a crime, when it became impossible.  Do you know what it cost me?  Do you know what it meant to me, and what I went through,