"You could not make me happy in that way."
"No. I suppose not. I shall find some other way. In the first place, I shall see Harmon and talk to him--"
"How? When?" Helen turned up her face in surprise.
"If you send what you have written, I shall leave to-night," said the colonel. "I shall reach New York as soon as your letter and see Harmon before he reads it, and tell him what I think."
"You will not do that?" She did not know whether she was frightened, or not, by the idea.
"I will," he answered. "I will not stay here tamely and let you wreck your life. If you mail your letter, I shall take the midnight train to Paris. I told you that I was in earnest."
Helen was silent, for she saw a new difficulty and more trouble before her, as though the last few hours had not brought her enough.
"I think," said Wimpole, "that I could persuade Harmon not to accept your generosity."
"I am not doing anything generous. You are making it hard for me to do what is right. You are almost threatening to do something violent, to hinder me."
"No. I know perfectly well that I should never do anything of that sort, and I think you know it, too. To treat Harmon as he deserves would certainly make a scandal which must reflect upon you."
"Please remember that he is still my husband--"
"Yes," interrupted Wimpole, bitterly, "and that is his only title to consideration."
Helen was on the point of rebuking him, but reflected that what he said was probably true.
"Please respect it, then, if you think so," she said quietly. "You say that you care for me--no, I won’t put it so--you do care for me. You love me, and I know you do. Let us be perfectly honest with each other. As long as you help me do right, it is not wrong to love me as you do, though I am another man’s wife. But as soon as you stand between me and my husband, it is wrong--wicked! It is wicked, no matter what he may have been to me. That has nothing to do with it. It is coming between man and wife--"
"Oh--really--that is going too far!" Wimpole raised his head a little higher, and seemed to breathe the night air angrily through his nostrils.
"No," answered Helen, persistently, for she was arguing against her heart, if not against her head, "it is not going at all too far. Such things should be taken for granted, or at least they should be left to the man and wife in question to decide. No one has any right to interfere, and no one shall. If I can forgive, you can have nothing to resent; for the mere fact of your liking me very much does not give you any sort of right to direct my life, does it? I am glad that you are so fond of me, for I trust you and respect you in every way, and even now I know that you are interfering only because you care for me. But you have not the right to interfere, not the slightest, and although you may be able to, yet if I beg you not to, it will not be honourable of you to come between us."