Part 41 (2/2)
”To save Dorothea?”
”To save Dorothea.”
”And for no other reason?”
”For no other reason.”
”Then, of course, I can't keep you to your word.”
”You can't release me from it except on one condition.”
”Which is--?”
”That Dorothea's secret shall be kept.”
”I must use my own judgment about that.”
”On the contrary, you must use mine. You've made me a proposal which I'm ready to accept. As a man of honor you must hold to it--or be silent.”
”Possibly,” he admitted, on reflection. ”I shall have to think it over.
But in that case we'd be just where we were--”
”Yes; just where we were.”
”And you'd be without help or protection. That's the thought I can't endure, Diane. Try to be just to me. If I make mistakes, if I flounder about, if I say things that offend you, it's because I can't rest while you're exposed to danger. Alone, as you are, in this great city, surrounded by people who are not your friends, a prey to criticism and misapprehension, when it is no worse, it's as if I saw you flung into the arena among the beasts. Can you wonder that I want to stand by you?
Can you be surprised if I demand the privilege of clasping you in my arms and saying to the world, This is my wife? When Christian women were thrown to the lions there was once a heathen husband who leaped into the ring, to die at his wife's side, because he could do no more. That's my impulse--only I could save you from the lions. I couldn't protect you against everything, perhaps, but I could against the worst. I know I'm stupid; I know I'm dull. When I come near you, I'm like the clown who touches some exquisite tissue, spun of azure; but I'm like the clown who would fight for his treasure, and defend it from sacrilegious hands, and spend his last drop of blood to keep it pure. It's to be put in a position where I can't do that that I find hard. It's to see you so defenceless--”
”But I'm not defenceless.”
”Why not? Whom have you? n.o.body--n.o.body in this world but me.”
”Oh yes, I have.”
”Who?”
She smiled faintly at the fierceness of his brief question.
”It's no one to whom you need feel any opposition, even though it's some one who can do for me what you cannot.”
”What I cannot?”
”What you cannot; what no man can. _Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor_.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Derek, He has purged me with hyssop, even though it has not been in the way you think.
With the hyssop of what I've had to suffer He has purged me from so many things that now I see I can safely commit my cause to Him.”
”So that you don't need me?”
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