It was a trying position for Will. He hardly knew what to do. Duty and love pulled him one way, chivalry and the hot blood of youth the other. When a beautiful woman makes one an offer like that, it would be scarcely human, scarcely virile to resist it. And Will was not only a man but also a poet?—?for a poet is a man with whom moods and impulses are stronger than with most of us. As poet, he cared little for mere conventional rules; it was the consequences to Linnet herself he had most to think about. But he saw it was no use talking to her from the standpoint he would have adopted with most ordinary Englishwomen. It was no use pointing out to her what he himself realised most distinctly, that her union with Andreas was in its very essence an unholy one, an insult to her own body, a treason against all that was truest and best in her being. It ran counter from the very first to the dictates of her own heart, which are the voice of Nature and of God within us. But to Linnet, those plain truths would have seemed but the veriest human sophisms. She looked upon her marriage with Andreas as a holy sacrament of the Church; and any attempt to set aside that sacrament by an earthly court, and to substitute for it a verbal marriage that was no marriage at all to her, but a profound mockery, would have seemed to her soul ten thousand times worse than avowed desertion and unconcealed wickedness. Better live in open sin, she thought, though she paid for it with her body, than insult her God by pretending to invoke his aid and blessing on an adulterous union.

Will argued feebly with her for a while, but it was all to no purpose. The teachings of her youth had too firm a hold upon her. He saw she was quite fixed in her own mind upon one thing; she might stop with him or she might go back, but she was Andreas Hausberger’s wife by the Church’s act, and no earthly power could make anything else of her. So Will gave up the attempt to convince her, as all in vain, at least for the present. He saw what he had to do first was to provide at once for the immediate future. Linnet couldn’t remain in his rooms alone with him that night; to him, at least, so much was certain. For her own dear sake, he must save her from herself; he must throw at least some decent veil for the moment over the relations between them.

For Linnet herself, long before this, the die was cast. She felt she had already deserted her husband; she had sinned in her heart the unspeakable sin; all the rest was in her eyes mere detail and convention. But she realised gratefully none the less Will’s goodness and kindness to her. “You are better to me far than I’ve been to myself,” she cried, clinging hard to him still; “I’ve wrecked my own soul, and you would try to save my poor earthly body.” And yet, in the mere intoxication of being near him and touching him, she more than half-forgot all else on earth; her warm Southern nature rejoiced in the light of her poet’s presence. She cared for nothing now; she thought of nothing, feared nothing; with Will by her side, she would gladly give her soul to burn for ever in nethermost hell, for the sake of those precious, those fleeting moments.

“I must find some place for you to spend the night in, Linnet,” Will said at last seriously. “Even if it were only to save scandal for the immediate future, I should have to do that; by to-morrow, all the world in London would be talking of it. But I hope, after a while, when I’ve reasoned this thing out with you, you may see it all differently?—?you may come round to my point of view; and then, you’ll be glad I arranged things now so as to leave the last loophole of divorce and re-marriage still open before you.”

Linnet shook her head firmly. “I’m a Catholic,” she said, with a sigh, “and to me, dear Will, religion means simply the Catholic faith and the Catholic practice. If I gave up that, I should give up everything. Either marriage is a sacrament, or it’s nothing at all. It’s to the sacrament alone that I attach importance. But if you wish me to go, I’ll go anywhere you take me; though, if I obeyed my own heart, I’d never move away from your dear side again, my darling, my darling!”

She clung to him with passionate force. Will felt it was hard to drive her from him against her will?—?how hard, perhaps, no woman could ever tell; for with women, the aggressiveness of love is a thing unknown; but for the love’s sake he bore her, he kept down his longing for her. “Have you brought any luggage with you?” he asked at last, drawing himself suddenly back, and descending all at once to the level of the practical.

“A little portmanteau, and?—?all I need for the night,” Linnet answered with a deep blush, still clinging hard to him. “My maid’s in the passage.”

“But how about the theatre this evening?” Will inquired with a little start. “You know, this was to have been your first appearance this season.”

Linnet opened her palms outward with a speaking gesture. “The theatre!” she cried, half-scornfully. “What do I care for the theatre? Now I’ve come to you, Will, what do I care for anything? If I had my own way, I’d stop here with you for ever and ever. The theatre?—?well, the theatre might do as best it could without me!”

Will paused, and reflected. He saw he must absolutely take measures to protect this hot passionate creature against the social consequences of her own hot passion. “You’ve got an understudy, I suppose,” he said; “someone who could fill the part pretty decently in your enforced absence? They don’t depend altogether upon you, I hope, for to-night’s performance.”

“Yes; I’ve got an understudy,” Linnet answered, in a very careless voice, clasping his hand tight in hers, and gripping it hard now and again, as though understudies were a matter of the supremest indifference to her. “She doesn’t know her part very well, and I’m the soul of the piece; but I daresay they could get along with her very tolerably enough somehow. Besides,” she added, in a little afterthought, looking down at her wounded arm, “after what Andreas has done to me, I’m too ill and too shaken to appear to-night, whatever might have happened. Even if I’d stopped at home, instead of coming here, I couldn’t possibly have undertaken to sing in public this evening.”

“Very well, then,” Will replied, making up his mind at once. “We must act accordingly. If that’s the case, the best thing I can do is to go out and telegraph to the management, without delay, that Signora Casalmonte is seriously indisposed, and won’t be able to appear in Carmen this evening.”

“To go out!” Linnet cried, clutching his arm in dismay. “Oh, dear Will, don’t do that! Don’t leave me for a moment. Suppose Andreas were to come, and to find me here alone? What on earth could I do? What on earth could I say to him?”

Will stroked her cheek once more, that beautiful soft cheek that he loved so dearly, as he answered in a grave and very serious tone, “Now, Linnet, you must be brave; and, above all, you must be practical. This is a crisis in our lives. A great deal depends upon it. If you love me, you must do as I advise you in this emergency. You have done quite right to come away from Andreas?—?instantly, the very moment you discovered this letter?—?the very moment he offered you such unmanly violence. In that, you were true woman. You’re in the right now, and if you behave circumspectly, all the world will admit it; all the world will say so. But you mustn’t stop here one second longer than is absolutely necessary. You must spend the night with some friend whom we know, some lady of position and unblemished reputation; and the world must think you went straight from your husband’s roof to hers, when all these things happened.”

Linnet drew back, all aghast. “What, go from you!” she cried: “this first night of our love. O Will, dear Will! Go, go right away from you!”

“Yes,” Will answered firmly. “For the moment, the one thing needful is to find such a shelter for you. If you took refuge in a hotel or private lodging to-night, people would whisper and hint?—?you know what they would hint; we must stop their hateful whisperings! Now, darling, you mustn’t say no; you must act as I advise. I’m going out at once to find that lady. I shall ask my sister first?—?she’s a clergyman’s wife, and nothing looks so well as a clergyman’s wife in England. But if she objects, I must try some other woman. You’re agitated to-night, and I should be doing you a gross wrong if I took advantage now of your love and your agitation. Though it isn’t you and myself I’m thinking of at all; you and I know, you and I understand one another. Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment; it isn’t that that I trouble for?—?it’s the hateful prying eyes and lying tongues of other people. For myself, darling, my creed is quite other than your priests’; I hold that, here to-night, you are mine, and I am yours; God and Nature have joined us, by the witness of our own hearts”; his voice sank solemnly, “and whom God hath joined together,” he added, in a very grave tone, “let not man put asunder.” He paused and hesitated. “But, for to-night,” he went on, “we must make some temporary arrangement; to-morrow and afterwards, we may settle for the future with one another at our leisure. When you look at it more calmly, dearest, you may change your mind about the matter of the divorce; till then, we must be cautious, and, in any case, we must take care to give the wicked world no handle against you.”

Linnet clutched him tight still. “But if you go,” she cried, all eagerness, “you won’t leave me; I may go with you.”

Her voice was so pleading, it cut Will to the quick to be obliged to refuse her. He leant over her tenderly. “My Linnet,” he cried, caressing her with one strong hand as he spoke, “I’d give worlds to be able to say yes; I can’t bear to say no to you. But for your own dear sake, once more, I must, I must. I can’t possibly let you go with me. Just consider this; how foolish it would be for me to let you be seen with me, to-night, on foot or in a cab, in the streets of London. All the world would say?—?with truth?—?you’d run away from your husband, and rushed straight into the arms of your lover. You and I know you’ve done perfectly right in that. But the world?—?the world would never know it. We must never let them have the chance of saying what, after their kind, we feel sure they would say about it.”

He rose from his chair. She clung to him, passionately. “Oh, take me with you, Will!” she cried, in a perfect fever of love. “Suppose Andreas was to come! Suppose he was to try and carry me off by force against my will! Oh, take me, take me with you!?—?don’t leave me here, alone, to Andreas!”

Sadly against his wish, Will disengaged her arms and untwined her fingers. He did it very tenderly but with perfect firmness. “No, darling,” he said, in a quiet tone of command; “let go! I must leave you here alone; it’s imperative. And it’s wisest so; it’s right; it’s the best thing to do for you. You are mine in future?—?you were always mine?—?and we shall have plenty of time to love one another as we will, hereafter. But to-night I must see you suffer no harm by this first false step of yours. My servant knows your husband well. He shall wait in the hall; and, if Andreas comes, deny us both to him. Your maid can come up here with you. I’ll take care no evil happens to you in any way in my absence. Trust me, trust me for this, Linnet; you needn’t be afraid of me.”

With a sudden change of front, Linnet held up her face to him. “I can always trust you, dear Will,” she cried. “I have always trusted you. All these long, long years I’ve known and seen how you yearned for one kiss?—?and would never take it. All these long, long years, I’ve known how you hungered and thirsted for my love?—?and kept down your own heart, letting only your eyes tell me a little?—?a very little?—?while your lips kept silence. The other men asked me many things, and asked me often?—?you know a singer’s life, what it is, and what rich people think of us, that they have but to offer us gold, and we will yield them anything. I never gave to one of them what I was keeping for you, my darling; I said to myself, ‘I am Andreas’s by the sacrament of the Church; but Will’s, Will’s, Will’s, by my own heart, and by the law of my nature!’ I trusted you then; I’ll trust you always. Good-bye, dear heart; go quick: come back again quick to me!”

She held the ripe red flower of her lips pursed upward towards his face. Will printed one hard kiss on that rich full mouth of hers. Then, sorely against his will, he tore himself away, and, in a tumult of warring impulses, descended the staircase.