t you," said Dorothea in an
anxious tone, "but let go of my arm."

He loosened his grip on her arm, but did not let it go. "You may
associate with whomsoever you please. Let those people treasure you to
whom you are a treasure. So far as money is concerned, you can have all
that I have. Here it is, take it." He drew from his pocket an
embroidered purse filled with coins, and hurled them on the table. "So
that you can wear fine dresses, I will play the organ on Sundays. So
that you can go to masquerade balls and parties of all kinds, I will try
to beat a little music into some twenty-odd unmusical idiots. I will do
more than that: I will promise never to bother myself about your
behaviour: I will never ask you where you have been or where you are
going. But listen, Dorothea," he said, as his face flushed with anger
and anxiety, his voice rising as if by unconscious pressure, "don't you
ever dare dishonour my name! It is the only thing I have. I owe humanity
an irreparable debt for it. It invests me not simply with what is known
as civic honour, it gives me also the honour I feel and enjoy when I
stand in the presence of what I have created. Lie, and you besmirch my
name! Lie, and you sully and debase it! I am probably not as much afraid
as you think I am of being regarded as a cuckold, though I admit that
the thought of it makes my blood boil. But I want to say to you here and
now, that when I think of you in the arms of another man I feel within
me a deep desire, a real lust for murder. But you would throw me into
the last pit of hell and damnation, if you were to repay the truths I
have told you and given you with lies, lies, lies. You must not, you
dare not, imagine for a minute that I am so selfish and vulgar as not to
be able to understand that a change might come over your heart. But that
is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is
impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except
in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the
divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether
you have been and are true to me! Don't be afraid, Dorothea, and don't
be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But
tell me: Have you been deceiving me?"

"I--deceiving you?" breathed Dorothea, and looked into his face as if
hypnotised, never so much as moving an eyelash. "What do you mean?
Deceiving you? Do you really think that