Paul got up again, abject, crushed, trembling in every limb.
"Man, man, don"t gnaw my heart away! Unsay your words! Have pity on me, and confess that it is a lie--a black, foul lie! Think of the horror of it--only think of it, and have pity!"
"It is true!"
Then Paul fell on his knees and caught his brother by the arm.
"Hugh, Hugh! my brother, confess it is false! Don"t let my flesh consume away with horror! Don"t let me envy the very dead who lie at peace in their graves! Pity her, if you have no pity left for me!"
"I would save you from a terrible sin."
Paul rose to his feet.
"Now I know it is a lie!" he said, and all the abject submission of his bearing fell away in one instant.
Hugh Ritson"s face flushed.
"There is that here," said Paul, throwing up his head and striking his breast, "that tells me it is false!"
Hugh smiled coldly, and regained his self-possession.
"My mother knew all. If Greta had been my half-sister, would she have stood by and witnessed our love?"
Hugh waved his hand deprecatingly.
"Your mother was as ignorant of the propinquity as you were. Robert Lowther was dead before she settled at Newlands. The survivors knew nothing of each other. The secret of that early and ill-fated marriage was buried with him."
"Destiny itself would have prevented it, for destiny shapes its own ends, and shapes them for the best," said Paul.
"Yes, destiny is shaping them now," said Hugh, "here, and in me. This is the point to which the pathways of your lives have tended. They meet here--and part."
Paul"s ashy face smiled.
"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been true, do you think we should not have known it--she and I--in the natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven"s own license. No sanction of the world or the world"s law, no earthly marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul"s eyes were bright, his face had lost its shadows.
"That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply.
"But I warn you to beware."
"I have no fear," said Paul.
"See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a few homely facts can fill. Verify them."
"I will, please G.o.d!"
"Accept my statements and these papers, or--disprove both."
"I will disprove them."
"Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but do you go elsewhere."
"What!"
Paul"s anger was boiling up.
"If you have wronged Greta--"
"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.
"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to repair the injury, you must pa.s.s this night apart."
"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that woman"s love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"
"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.
"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his clinched fist.
"Take care, I tell you," said Hugh.
Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his quick breathing beat on Hugh"s face.
"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"
But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh Ritson was dashed to the ground.
In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a flood of emotion:
"Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!"
He darted to the door and threw it open.
"Come in, come in! will n.o.body come?" he cried.
The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing, listening and quivering, behind the door.
In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul"s side.
Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.
"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"
Hugh Ritson rose to his feet.
"Paul, what has happened?" cried Greta.
"Take him away."
And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and had been tempted to do.
"Hugh, what is it?"