“But I never loved you as I loathe you now for the foul thing you are become, you that were to conquer the world for me. You did not know that it was I whom you were paid to carry off! And you are so shameless, so lost to honour, that you dare to urge that ignorance as your excuse. Well, you know it now, and I hope you are punished in the knowledge. I hope that, if any lingering sense of shame abides in you, it will scorch your miserable soul to ashes. Get up, man,” she bade him, regally contemptuous, splendidly tragic. “Shall grovelling there mend any of your vileness?” He came instantly to his feet. Yet it was not, as she supposed, in obedience to her command, so much as out of a sudden awakening to the need for instant action. All the agony that was threatening to burst his soul must be repressed, all that he had to say in expression and perhaps relieving of that agony, must wait. “What I have done, I can undo,” he said, and, commanding himself under the stress of that urgent necessity, he assumed a sudden firmness. “Shall we stand talking here instead of acting, when every moment of delay increases your danger? Come! As I carried you hither, in defiance of all, so will I carry you hence again at once while yet there is time.” She recoiled before the hand that he flung out as if to seize her and compel her. There was a sudden fury of anger in her eyes, a fury of scorn on her lips. “You will carry me hence! You! I am to trust myself to you!” He never winced under the lash of her contempt, so intent was he upon that one urgent thing. “Will you stay, then, and trust yourself to Buckingham?” he flung fiercely back at her. “Come, I say,” he commanded, oddly masterful in his overwhelming concern for her. “With you? Oh, not that! Never with you! Never!” He beat his hands together in his frenzy of impatience. “Will you not realize that there is no time to lose? That if you stay here you are lost? Go alone, if you will. Return home at once. But since you must go afoot, and you may presently be pursued, suffer me at least to follow after you, to do what I can to make you safe. Trust me in this ... for your own sake trust me.... In God’s name!” “Trust you?” she echoed, and almost she seemed to laugh. “You? After this?” “Aye, after this. Because of this. I may be as vile as you are deeming me; not a doubt I am. But I never could have been vile to you. It may not excuse me to protest that I did not know it was against you that I was acting. But it should make you believe that I am ready to defend you now--now that I know. You must believe me! Can you doubt me in such a matter? Unless I meant honestly by you, why should I be urging you to depart? Come!” This time he caught her by the wrist, and maintained his hold against her faint attempt to liberate herself. He attempted to draw her after him across the room. A moment she hung back, resisting still. “For God’s sake!” he implored her madly. “At any moment Buckingham may arrive!”