for cruelty in me. I may have been—I have been—cruel in the past, but never to you. You have no right to treat me as you have done lately. If you examine your feelings, and compare them with facts, you will see their absurdity.”
“But,” she interposed, with a woman’s fatal quickness, “that will not do away with their reality.”
“It must. Look into their faces until they fade like ghosts, seen only between light and darkness. They are founded upon nothing; they are bred without father or mother; they are hysterical; they are wicked. Think a little of me. You are not going to be conquered by a chimera, to allow a phantom created by your imagination to ruin the happiness that has been so beautiful. You will not do that! You dare not!”
She only answered:
“If I can help it.”
A passionate anger seized me, a fury at my impotence against this child. I pushed her almost roughly from my arms.
“And I have married this woman!” I cried bitterly. I got up.
Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; it looked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed.
“Do not be angry,” she said. “We are controlled by something inside of us; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against.”
“There is nothing we cannot fight against,” I said passionately. “The doctrine of predestination is the devil’s own doctrine. It is the doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward’s doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool. There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me, acting like a girl, testing me. Let us have no more of it.”
She said:
“I only do what I must.”
Her tone turned me cold. Her set face frightened me, and angered me, for there was a curious obstinacy in it. I left the room abruptly, and did not return. That night I had no sleep.
I am not a coward, but I find that I am inclined to fear that which fears me. I
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