"Then nature would have prevented it," he said. "If this thing had been true, do you think we should not have known it--she and I--in the natural recoil of our own hearts? When true hearts meet, there is that within which sanctions their love, and says it is good. That is Heaven's own license. No sanction of the world or the world's law, no earthly marriage is like to that, for it is the marriage first made by nature itself. Our hearts have met, hers and mine, and the same nature has sanctioned our love and sanctified it. And against that last, that first, that highest arbiter, do you ask me to take the evidence of these poor, pitiful papers? Away with them!" Paul's eyes were bright, his face had lost its shadows. "That is very beautiful, no doubt," said Hugh, and he smiled deeply. "But I warn you to beware." "I have no fear," said Paul. "See to it, I tell you. These lofty emotions leave a void that only a few homely facts can fill. Verify them." "I will, please God!" "Accept my statements and these papers, or--disprove both." "I will disprove them." "Meantime, take care. Leave your wife in this house until morning, but do you go elsewhere." "What!" Paul's anger was boiling up. "If you have wronged Greta--" "I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer. "I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to repair the injury, you must pass this night apart." "Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!" "I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again. "Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his clinched fist. "Take care, I tell you," said Hugh. Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his quick breathing beat on Hugh's face. "For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!" But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh Ritson was dashed to the ground. In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a flood of emotion: "Get up! get up! Hugh, Hugh! get up!" He darted to the door and threw it open. "Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried. The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing, listening and quivering, behind the door. In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's side. Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands. "Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"