"Shall not!--dare not!" he echoed disdainfully--"Woman's words,--woman's ranting!--the shriek of the outraged feminine animal who fails to attract, as she thinks, her chosen mate. Such a love as yours!--what is it? Degradation to whosoever shall accept it,--shame to whosoever shall rely upon it! You make a boast of your beauty; your mirror shows you a pleasing image,--but your mirror lies!--as admirably as you do! You see within it not the reflection of yourself, for that would cause you to recoil in horror, ... you merely look upon your fleshly covering, a garment of tissues, shrinkable, perishable, and only fit to mingle with the dust from which it sprang. Your beauty! I see none of it,--I see You! and to me you are hideous, and will remain hideous for ever. I hate you!--I hate you with the bitterness of an immeasurable and unforgiving hatred,--for you have done me a wrong,--you have wrought an injury upon me,--you have added another burden to the load of punishment I carry!" She made a forward movement with outstretched arms,--he repulsed her by a fierce gesture. "Stand back!" he said--"Be afraid of me, as of an unknown Terror! O pitiless Heaven!--to think of it!--but a night ago I was lifted a step nearer to my lost delight!--and now this woman drags me back, and down!--and yet again I hear the barring of the gates of Paradise! O infinite torture! O wicked souls of men and women!--is there no touch of grace or thought of God left in you!--and will ye make my sorrows eternal!" He stood, lifting his face to the light where it streamed through the oriel window, and the moonbeams colouring themselves faintly roseate as they filtered through the painted garments of St Stephen, showed a great and terrible anguish in his eyes. I heard him with amazement and awe,--I could not imagine what he meant by his strange words,--and it was evident by her expression, that my reckless and abandoned wife was equally mystified. "Lucio,"--she murmured--"Lucio, ... what is it ... what have I done?--I who would not wound you for the world?--I who but seek your love, Lucio, to repay it in full with such fond passion and tenderness as you have never known! For this and this only, I married Geoffrey,--I chose your friend as husband because he was your friend!" (O perfidious woman!) "and because I saw his foolish egotism--his pride in himself and his riches,--his blind confidence in me and in you;--I knew that I could, after a time, follow the fashion of many another woman in my set and choose my lover,--ah, my lover!--I had chosen him already,--I have chosen you, Lucio!--yes, though you hate me you cannot hinder me from loving you,--I shall love you till I die!" He turned his gaze upon her steadily,--the gloom deepening on his brows. "And after you die?" he said--"Will you love me then?" There was a stern derision in his tone which appeared to vaguely terrify her. "After death! ..." she stammered.