She flushed to her temples, starting impulsively in her seat.
"Mr. Ashe," she said vehemently, "what right have you to talk to me of such subjects at all?"
"None," he answered, "none at all,--unless--None that you would recognize; but I wish to atone for the wrong I did in speaking to you, and to say what he would never say. If it were possible that you cared for him, I should perhaps help you both."
"You forget, I think, that I have been married."
"I do not forget anything," Philip returned desperately. "It is only that he is a good man, a noble man, a man that would never have fallen under his weakness as I did, and if you cared for him, he is too fine to be allowed to suffer. He loved you long before I ever saw you."
Her flushed cheeks and something in the way in which she said this seemed to him to indicate that she did love Candish. He had been moved by the most sincere desire to sacrifice his own will and happiness to the well-being of the woman he loved, and if it were that she loved his rival he had been ready to forget everything but that. Now by a quick revulsion it seemed to him that he could not endure the success of this man whose cause he had been pleading.
"Ah!" he cried, bending toward her, "you love him!"
"Your impertinence is amazing!" she exclaimed. "It is time that somebody told you the truth. It is hard for me to say unkind things to one who has saved my life, but you ought to know how you appear. You have got yourself into a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind and body; and unless you get out of it you will ruin your whole career. Does it seem to you that a man who has so little control over himself is a fit leader for others? Can't you see that you have brooded over this question of celibacy until you are completely morbid? Find some wholesome, right-minded woman, Mr. Ashe; love her and marry her, and be done with all this wretched, unwholesome mawkishness. As for me, when I married once, I married for life. My son will never be given a second father."
He had risen also, and his self-possession had returned to him.
"I have annoyed you," he said with a new dignity. "You are perhaps right in saying that I am morbid, but in what I said to-day I was trying to put self entirely out of the question. There is only one thing more that I want to say; and that is that it is not fair to judge our order by me. I know only too well how natural it is that you should think all the men at the Clergy House weak and despicable like me; but that is not so. They are sincere, self-forgetful fellows. You have seen my friend Wynne. He, for instance, is as manly and fine and honest as any man alive."