He left that hypothesis uncompleted. “And now,” he said, with a curious contrast between his voice and the exaltation of his sentiments, “now that I am to be your tormented, your emasculated lover to the very end of things, emasculated by laws I hate and customs I hate and vile foresights that I despise——” He paused, his thread lost for a moment. “Because,” he said, “I’m going to do it. I’m going to do what I can. I’m going to be as you wish me to be, to help you, to serve you.... If you can’t come to meet me, I’ll meet you. I can’t help but love you, I can’t do without you. Never in my life have I subscribed willingly to the idea of renunciation. I’ve hated renunciation. But if there is no other course but renunciation, renunciation let it be. I’m bitter about this, bitter to the bottom of my soul, but at least I’ll have you know I love you. Anyhow....” His voice broke. There were tears in his eyes. And on the very crest of these magnificent capitulations his soul rebelled. He turned about so swiftly that for a sentence or so she did not realize the nature of his change. Her mind remained glowing with her distressed acceptance of his magnificent nobility. “I can’t,” he said. He flung off his surrenders as a savage might fling off a garment. “When I think of his children,” he said. “When I think of the world filled by his children, the children you have borne him—and I—forbidden almost to touch your hand!” And flying into a passion Mr. Brumley shouted “No!” “Not even to touch your hand!” “I won’t do it,” he assured her. “I won’t do it. If I cannot be your lover—I will go away. I will never see you again. I will do anything—anything, rather than suffer this degradation. I will go abroad. I will go to strange places. I will aviate. I will kill myself—or anything, but I won’t endure this. I won’t. You see, you ask too much, you demand more than flesh and blood can stand. I’ve done my best to bring myself to it and I can’t. I won’t have that—that——” He waved his trembling fingers in the air. He was absolutely unable to find an epithet pointed enough and bitter enough to stab into the memory of the departed knight. He thought of him as marble, enthroned at Kensal Green, with a false dignity, a false serenity, and intolerable triumph. He wanted something, some monosyllable to expound and strip all that, some lung-filling sky-splitting monosyllable that one could shout. His failure increased his exasperation. “I won’t have him grinning, at me,” he said at last. “And so, it’s one thing or the other. There’s no other choice. But I know your choice. I see your choice. It’s good-bye—and why—why shouldn’t I go now?”