"Captain Boyson!" she cried, her composure giving way, "this is intolerable, outrageous! It is humiliating that you should even expect me to argue with you. Yet," she bit her lip, angry with the agitation that would assail her, "for the sake of our friendship to which you appeal, I would rather not be angry. What you say is monstrous!" her voice shook. "In the first place, I freed myself from a man who married me for money."
"One moment! Do you forget that from the day you left him Roger has never touched a farthing of your money? That he returned everything to you?"
"I had nothing to do with that; it was his own folly."
"Yes, but it throws light upon his character. Would a mere fortune-hunter have done it? No, Mrs. Barnes!--that view of Roger does not really convince you, you do not really believe it."
"As it happens, in his letters to me after I left him, he amply confessed it."
"Because his wish was to make peace, to throw himself at your feet. He accused himself, more than was just. But you do not really think him mercenary and greedy, you _know_ that he was neither! Mrs. Barnes, Roger is ill and lonely."
"You mean that he has begun to drink, has fallen into bad company. That may be true. I cannot deny it. But consider. A man from whom everything is torn at one blow; a man of not very strong character, not accustomed to endure hardness.--Does it never occur to you that you took a frightful responsibility?"
"Or rather--did you murder a life--that God had given you in trust?"
He paused, and she paused also, as though held by the power of his will. They were passing along the public garden that borders the road; scents of lilac and fresh leaf floated over the damp grass; the moonlight was growing in strength, and the majesty of the gorge, the roar of the leaping water all seemed to enter into the moral and human scene, to accent and deepen it.
Daphne suddenly clung to a seat beside the path, dropped into it.
"Captain Boyson! I--I cannot bear this any longer."
"I will not reproach you any more," he said, quietly. "I beg your pardon. The past is irrevocable, but the present is here. The man who loved you, the father of your child, is alone, ill, poor, in danger of moral ruin, because of what you have done. I ask you to go to his aid. But first let me tell you exactly what I have just heard from England." He repeated the greater part of French's letter, so far as it concerned Roger.