"In that case I shall be compelled to take the most disagreeable measures--I shall be compelled to hold your secret as a threat over you, if you refuse to be my wife. I tell you, quite honestly, that I will make you the laughing-stock of all London. You--fair, beautiful, imperial--you shall be an object of scorn; men shall laugh at you, women turn aside as you pass by. Even the most careless and reckless shall refuse to receive you--shall consider you out of the pale. I will tell the whole world, if you compel me to do it, what you were to me in Florence; I will tell the handsome earl, your father, whose roof in that case will no longer shelter you. I will tell your proud, high-bred step-mother--the haughty duchess who presented you at court--nay, even the queen herself, she who values a woman's good name far above all worldly rank." "You would do all that?" she said. "Yes, just as soon as I would look at you." "And you call that honor?" "No; it is, on the contrary, most dishonorable. Do not imagine that I seek to deceive myself. It would be about the most dishonorable thing any person could do; in fact, nothing could be more base; I grant that. But, if you drive a man mad with love, what can he do? You compel me to take the step, or I would not take it." She could not grow paler; her face was already ghastly white; but from her eyes there shot one glance that might, from its anger and its fire, have struck him blind. "You would not spare me," she said, "because it was you yourself who led me to ruin." "I love you so madly," he said, "that I cannot spare you at all." "Have you thought," she asked, "what, if you do this deed, the world will say of you and to you? Have you weighed this well?" "I am indifferent," he said; "I care for nothing on earth but winning you." "Do you realize that in destroying me you destroy yourself; that you will make yourself more hated and despised than any man ever was before? Do you not see that?" "I repeat that nothing interests me save winning you, Dora; I am quite willing to be destroyed with you." "What will the world say to a man who deliberately destroys and ruins a girl as you did me?" "My dearest Dora, the world hears such stories every day and, I am afraid, rather admires the heroes of them." "What does it say, then, of cowardly men who, having won such a victory, boast of it?"