"And isn't it true?" she demanded, speaking quickly and with impassioned emphasis. "Is not the very phrase that you are mean and base enough to fling at me in derision nothing more nor less than Heaven's truth? Is it not entirely because I did indeed prefer my own self-respect to ill-gotten money that there is a showplace in London such as you describe? That squalid room, and the cruel ordeals I underwent within its walls, are the very witnesses that testify to my claim to be held a good woman and a fit wife for any man. Not a day passed without my enduring more than you can ever realise. I was entirely without hope for the future, yet never once--never once, I tell you--did I regret the choice I had made. "That grinding poverty was no shame to me," she went on, "but a glory; and no one knows that better than you--you, Morris Kenyon! And I would go back to it--live and die in it--rather than lose my own consciousness of virtue. You despicable coward! How dare you come here and taunt me with humiliations for which you alone are responsible? Everything that is degrading and wretched in my life has been brought into it by you. You indeed did your best to turn me into a woman whom a man well might fear to entrust with his name and with his honour, but that garret cries out to you and to all the world the story of your failure. It is infamous--vile--to bring forward such an acceptance of poverty as a reason for opposing your cousin's choice of me as his wife. It is infamous, and you know it." She paused, breathing hard, still struggling with a sense of outrage. Her words had not been devoid of a certain sting, and once or twice Morris had inwardly winced beneath the onslaught. But circumstances placed every advantage--every weapon of lasting keenness--into his hands. Thus it was with unruffled complacency that he declared-- "My dear Evarne, could you not contrive to conquer this tendency to wax melodramatic? You know I dislike it, and that it is always ineffective." He waited a minute, half expecting her to answer. But obedient to his expressed will Evarne succeeded in stifling all retorts, and remained silent. Looking at her narrowly, he could see signs of the effort she made over herself, and smiled a little before he continued-- "You force me to speak more plainly than I had hoped would be necessary. Surely you must know that I do not really need to adduce any exterior or subsequent details of your career in support of my very natural objection to this marriage. The one fact of your having been my mistress is alone all-sufficient. Understand that, please! You calmly ask me to allow Geoffrey to walk blindly into the trap you have set for him, and hurl insults at my head when I refuse! I should like to know what you expected? Did you really believe I should become a party to this deceit?" But again he received no answer. Evarne simply looked at him with eyes that had grown somewhat dilated.