Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/469

 "I thought of taking you with me, but the way was too long; yours was more than talent—far more; it was genius, but buried deep and scattered wide. It would have taken a lifetime to chisel it out and assemble it in the perfect whole of successful art. I shrank before the treadmill task.

"And something else—I was jealous of you!"

Hampstead, who despite his incredulity had been listening attentively, raised his eyebrows.

"Jealous of the artist you might become. Your genius when it flowered would overtop mine as your character overtops mine."

The speaker paused, as if to mark the effect of her words.

"Go on," urged Hampstead impatiently, and for the first time betraying feeling. "In the name of God, woman, if you have one word of justification to speak, let me hear it!"

"I have it," Miss Dounay rejoined, yet more impetuously, "in that one word which I have already spoken—love!" She paused, passed her hand across her brow, and again resumed the thread of her story, still speaking rapidly but with an increase of dramatic emphasis.

"Then came the final ecstasy of pain. You loved me. You demanded me. You charged me with loving you. You told me it was like the murder of a beautiful child to kill a love like ours. You argued, persuaded, demanded—compelled—almost possessed me!"

The woman's face whitened, her eyes closed, and she reeled dizzily under the spell of a memory that swept her into transports.

"But," replied the minister quietly, "you killed our beautiful child."

"No! No!!" she exclaimed, thrusting out her hands to him. "Do not say that! I only exposed it—to the