’You think me so boyish and weak-minded that I cannot distinguish between pure love and base?  One thing I left out of my narrative just now.  I ought to have said that I was not wholly without blame in that intercourse.  I strove with myself to seem nothing more than friendly to her, and yet I know that at times I spoke as no mere friend would have done, and simply because I could not help it.  I loved Thyrza even then with more intensity of pure feeling than I had ever before known, and now I love her with a love which lasts a lifetime.  You have no right to pronounce so confidently upon her fitness or unfitness to mate with me; your knowledge of her is very slight.  I know her as a woman can only be known by the man who loves her.  You cannot judge for me in this case; no one could judge for me.  I shall act on my conviction; it is poor waste of life to do otherwise.’

A pause, whereof the seconds were to one ear beaten out in heart-throbs.  Then Mrs. Ormonde said, very quietly: 

‘You have told Mr. Grail of this intention?’

‘Yes.’

’It has never occurred to you that the great wrongs this man has suffered might yet be repaired, perchance, if you were willing to let them be?’

’I have suffered on his account more than I can say.  But it is certain that he and Thyrza would never marry after this.’

‘I see no such certainty.’

’Then it merely comes to this, that he and I love the same woman, and must abide by her decision.’

‘The library?’

’Gone.  I can give no thought to it, for I am suffering a greater lose.  Be human!  Be honest!  Would you not despise me if, loving her as I do, I came to you and puled about the overthrow of my schemes for founding a public library?  Let it go!  Let the people rust and rot in ignorance!  I am a man of flesh and blood, and the one woman that the world contains is lost to me!’

Mrs. Ormonde seemed to think long over this passionate outcry.  Egremont broke the silence.

’Once more, be human!  She writes to her sister that she has been ill, but is now taken care of by friends.  What friends?  You are not ignorant of the world.  How small a chance it is that she has fallen among people who will protect her!  A girl with her beauty, and so simple, so trustful—­friends, indeed!  I am all but frenzied to think of the dangers that may surround her.  She is more to me than my life’s blood, and perhaps even now she is in terrible need of some honest man to protect her.  And you can talk coldly about prudence, about what we shall think and say years hence!  Well, I can talk no more.  To-morrow morning I shall go back to London and go on searching for her, walking about the streets day and night, wearing my life away in longing for her.  I have done with the past, and all those I used to call my friends.  There is no room in my thought for anything but her memory and the desire to find her.  Let us say good-bye, Mrs. Ormonde.  If I am wrong and selfish as you say, then it is beyond my power to conquer the faults.’