Nevertheless, it was not without a softened, almost regretful, tone that he finally said,--"If I go, Astra, you understand that our engagement is at an end."
"Our engagement!" repeated Astra, looking at him with a kind of scornful amaze. "How dare you insult me thus? I was never engaged to you,--never!"
Doctor Remy stood aghast. For one moment, he believed that her senses were taking leave of her.
"Never!" repeated Astra, with proud emphasis. "I was engaged," she went on, after a moment, in an altered and tremulous tone, "to a MAN,--a calm, wise, noble man,--not a monster, nor a piece of mechanism. I was engaged to an earnest seeker after truth, a courageous grappler with problems that other men shunned, an honest speaker of his own thoughts and moulder of his own opinions,--a man who, though he might be temporarily led astray by the very excess of his virtues of candor, boldness, and integrity, would be sure to come right in the end. He is dead,--or he never lived, except in my imagination,--_requiescat in pace_. But to _you_,--a body without a soul, an intellect without a heart, a will without a faith, a kind of human beast of prey, intent on nothing but the gratification of his own selfish ends,--to you I was never pledged. I would as soon have bound myself to a corpse, or a calculating machine."
"This is plain talk, Astra," said Dr. Remy, growing pale with anger and mortification. "If you were not a woman, it would be easier to answer it."
"It is not only plain talk, but plain sight," replied Astra. "The scales have fallen from my eyes; at last, I see you as you are. The most that can be said for you, as well as in excuse for my late infatuation (for I would not seem altogether despicable in my own eyes), is that great and rich capabilities have been miserably perverted, in your person. A grand soul has somehow been strangled within you. Some hidden canker--beginning I know not when nor where, but to which your surgeon's knowledge ought to have impelled you long ago to put the surgeon's knife--has slowly eaten out everything that was sound and good, in your moral system, and left nothing but rottenness. And it is now too late for remedy. If it were not,--if there were any hope that I could help to save you, by clinging to you,--I think I have the strength and courage to do it. As it is, I should only corrupt myself. Indeed, I fear it will be long ere I get rid of the virus of doubt and captiousness, which, I find, you have already introduced into my mind; and of which that figure" (she pointed to the statue of clay) "is the legitimate outcome. You have given a bias to my mode of thought, which has already shaken my faith to its foundations,--and might, in time (but for the scathing commentary of your life upon your opinions), have destroyed it. Leave me now. We have done with each other."