"Madam?"
"Don't be so hatefully proud, Barnabas."
"Proud, madam--I?"
"Cruelly, wickedly, hatefully proud! Oh, dear me! what a superbly
virtuous, heroic fool you are, Barnabas. When you met her at the
crossroads, for instance--oh, I know all about it--when you had her
there--in your arms, why didn't you--run off with her and marry her,
as any ordinary human man would have done? Dear heaven, it would
have been so deliciously romantic! And--such an easy way out of it!"
"Yes," said Barnabas, beginning to frown, "so easy that it was--wrong!"
"Quite so and fiddlesticks!" sniffed the Duchess.
"Madam?"
"Oh, sir, pray remember that one wrong may sometimes make two right!
As it is, you will let your abominable pride--yes, pride! wreck and
ruin two lives. Bah!" cried the Duchess very fiercely as she rose
and turned to the door, "I've no patience with you!"
"Ah, Duchess," said Barnabas, staying her with pleading hands,
"can't you see--don't you understand? Were she, this proud lady, my
wife, I must needs be haunted, day and night, by the fear that some
day, soon or late, she would find me to be--not of her world--not
the man she would have me, but only--the publican's son, after all.
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