"No! I will hear nothing! Your touch is profanation. I would sooner go down into my grave, out there in the churchyard, under the granite slabs, than become the wife of a man so unprincipled. I am neither piqued nor jealous, for your affairs cannot affect my life; I am only astonished and mortified and grieved. I would sooner feel the coil of a serpent around my waist than your arms."
Instantly they fell away. He crossed them on his chest, and his voice sank to a husky whisper, as the wind hushes itself just before the storm breaks.
"Edna, God is my witness that I am not deceiving you; that my words come from the great troubled depths of a wretched heart. You said you knew nothing of my history. I find it more difficult to believe you than you to credit my declarations. Answer one question: Has not your pastor taught you to distrust me? Can it be possible that no hint of the past has fallen from his lips?"
"Not one unkind word, not one syllable of your history has he uttered. I know no more of your past than if it were buried in mid- ocean."
Mr. Murray placed her in one of the cushioned chairs designed for the use of the choir, and leaning back against the railing of the gallery, fixed his eyes on Edna's face.
"Then it is not surprising that you distrust me, for you know not my provocation. Edna, will you be patient? Will you go back with me over the scorched and blackened track of an accursed and sinful life? It is a hideous waste I am inviting you to traverse! Will you?"
"I will hear you, Mr. Murray, but nothing that you can say will justify your duplicity to Gertrude, and--"
"D--n Gertrude! I ask you to listen, and suspend your judgment till you know the circumstances."
He covered his eyes with his hand, and in the brief silence she heard the ticking of his watch.
"Edna, I roll away the stone from the charnel house of the past, and call forth the Lazarus of my buried youth, my hopes, my faith in God, my trust in human nature, my charity, my slaughtered manhood! My Lazarus has tenanted the grave for nearly twenty years, and comes forth, at my bidding, a grinning skeleton. You may or may not know that my father, Paul Murray, died when I was an infant, leaving my mother the sole guardian of my property and person. I grew up at Le Bocage under the training of Mr. Hammond, my tutor; and my only associate, my companion from earliest recollections, was his son Murray, who was two years my senior, and named for my father. The hold which that boy took upon my affection was wonderful, inexplicable! He wound me around his finger as you wind the silken threads with which you embroider. We studied, read, played together. I was never contented out of his sight, never satisfied until I saw him liberally supplied with everything that gave me pleasure. I believe I was very precocious, and made extraordinary strides in the path of learning; at all events, at sixteen I was considered a remarkable boy. Mr. Hammond had six children; and as his salary was rather meagre I insisted on paying his son's expenses as well as my own when I went to Yale. I could not bear that my Damon, my Jonathan, should be out of my sight; I must have my idol always with me. His father was educating him for the ministry, and he had already commenced the study of theology; but no! I must have him with me at Yale, and so to Yale we went. I had fancied myself a Christian, had joined the church, was zealous and faithful in all my religious duties. In a fit of pious enthusiasm I planned this church--ordered it built. The cost was enormous, and my mother objected, but I intended it as a shrine for the 'apple of my eye,' and where he was concerned, what mattered the expenditure of thousands? Was not my fortune quite as much at his disposal as at mine? I looked forward with fond pride to the time when I should see my idol--Murray Hammond--standing in yonder shining pulpit. Ha! at this instant it is filled with a hideous spectre! I see him there! His form and features mocking me, daring me to forget! Handsome as Apollo! treacherous as Apollyon!"