At first she had not believed that he was in earnest, but she could not long mistake the tone of a man determined to risk much more than life and limb for his desperate purpose. Her just anger leaped up like a flame.
'Are you an utter scoundrel, after all? Have you no honour left? Is there nothing in you to which a woman can appeal? You talk of being human! You prate of your man's nature! And in the same breath you threaten an innocent girl with public infamy, if she will not disgrace herself of her own free will! Is that your love? Did I give you mine for that? Shame on you! And shame on me for being so deceived!'
Her voice rang like steel and the thrusts of her deadly reproach pierced deep. He was on his feet, in the impulse of self-defence, before she had half done, trying to silence her--he was at her side, calling her by her name, but she would not hear him.
'No, I believed in you!' she went on. 'I trusted you! I loved you--but I have loved a villain and believed a liar, and I am a prisoner under a coward's roof!' Beseeching, he tried to lay his hand upon her sleeve; she mistook his meaning. 'Take care!' she cried, and suddenly the revolver was in her hand. 'Take care, I say! A nun is only a woman after all!'
He threw himself in front of her in an instant, his arms wide out, and as the muzzle came close against his chest, he gave the familiar word of command in a loud, clear tone:
'If you despise me for loving you beyond honour and disgrace, then fire, for I would rather die by your hand than live without you! I am ready! Pull the trigger! Let the end be here, this instant!'
He believed that she would do it, and for one awful moment she had felt that she was going to kill him. Then she lowered the weapon and laid it on the chair beside her with slow deliberation, though her hands shook so much that she almost dropped it. As if no longer seeing him, she turned to the door, folded her hands on the panel, and leaned her forehead against them.
'Forgive us our sins, as we forgive them that trespass against us!'
His own hand was on the revolver to do what she had refused to do. As when the cyclone whirls on itself, just beyond the still storm-centre, and strikes all aback the vessel it has driven before it for hours, so the man's passion had turned to destroy him. But the holy words stayed his hand.