Olive's having flung herself upon Mrs. Tarrant's bosom testified to the convulsive scene that had just taken place behind the locked door. He closed it again, sharply, in the face of the reporter and the policeman, and at the same moment Selah Tarrant descended, through the aperture leading to the platform, from his brief communion with the public. On seeing Ransom he stopped short, and, gathering his waterproof about him, measured the young man from head to foot.
'Well, sir, perhaps
'Father, be still; father, it will come out all right in a moment!' cried Verena, below her breath, panting like an emergent diver.
'There's one thing I want to know: are we going to spend half an hour talking over our domestic affairs?' Mr. Filer demanded, wiping his indignant countenance. 'Is Miss Tarrant going to lecture, or ain't she going to lecture? If she ain't, she'll please to show cause why. Is she aware that every quarter of a second, at the present instant, is worth about five hundred dollars?'
'I know that—I know that, Mr. Filer; I will begin in a moment!' Verena went on. 'I only want to speak to Mr. Ransom—just three words. They are perfectly quiet—don't you see how quiet they are? They trust me, they trust me, don't they, father? I only want to speak to Mr. Ransom.'
'Who the devil is Mr. Ransom?' cried the exasperated, bewildered Filer.
Verena spoke to the others, but she looked at her lover, and the expression of her eyes was ineffably touching and beseeching. She trembled with nervous passion, there were sobs and supplications in her voice, and Ransom felt himself flushing with pure pity for her pain—her inevitable agony. But at the same moment he had another perception, which brushed aside remorse; he saw that he could do what he wanted, that she begged him, with all her being, to spare her, but that so long as he should protest she was submissive, helpless. What he wanted, in this light, flamed before him and challenged all his manhood, tossing his determination to a height from which not only Doctor Tarrant, and Mr. Filer, and Olive, over there, in her sightless, soundless shame, but the great expectant hall as well, and the mighty multitude, in suspense, keeping quiet from minute to minute and holding the breath of its anger—from which all these things looked small, surmountable, and of the moment only. He didn't quite understand, as yet, however; he saw that Verena had not refused, but temporised, that the spell upon her—thanks to which he should still be able to rescue her—had been the knowledge that he was near.
'Come away, come away,' he murmured quickly, putting out his two hands to her.
She took one of them, as if to plead, not to consent. 'Oh, let me off, let me off—for
'What I want to know is why Mr. Ransom isn't in the hands of the police!' wailed Mrs. Tarrant, from her sofa.
'I have been, madam, for the last quarter of an hour.' Ransom felt more and more that he could manage it, if he only kept cool. He bent over Verena with a tenderness in which he was careless, now, of observation. 'Dearest, I told you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are mine, you are not theirs.'
'What under the sun is the man talking about? With the most magnificent audience ever brought together! The city of Boston is under this roof!' Mr. Filer gaspingly interposed.
'The city of Boston be damned!' said Ransom.
'Mr. Ransom is very much interested in my daughter. He doesn't approve of our views,' Selah Tarrant explained.
'It's the most horrible, wicked, immoral selfishness I ever heard in my life!' roared Mrs. Tarrant.
'Selfishness! Mrs. Tarrant, do you suppose I pretend not to be selfish?'
'Do you want us all murdered by the mob, then?'
'They can have their money—can't you give them back their money?' cried Verena, turning frantically round the circle.
'Verena Tarrant, you don't mean to say you are going to back down?' her mother shrieked.
'Good God! that I should make her suffer like this!' said Ransom to himself; and to put an end to the odious scene he would have seized Verena in his arms and broken away into the outer world, if Olive, who at Mrs. Tarrant's last loud challenge had sprung to her feet, had not at the same time thrown herself between them with a force which made the girl relinquish her grasp of Ransom's hand. To his astonishment, the eyes that looked at him out of her scared, haggard face were, like Verena's, eyes of tremendous entreaty. There was a moment during which she would have been ready to go down on her knees to him, in order that the lecture should go on.
'If you don't agree with her, take her up on the platform, and have it out there; the public would like that, first-rate!' Mr. Filer said to Ransom, as if he thought this suggestion practical.
'She had prepared a lovely address!' Selah remarked mournfully, as if to the company in general.
No one appeared to heed the observation, but his wife broke out again. 'Verena Tarrant, I should like to slap you! Do you call such a man as that a gentleman? I don't know where your father's spirit is, to let him stay!'
Olive, meanwhile, was literally praying to her kinsman. 'Let her appear this once, just this once: not to ruin, not to shame! Haven't you any pity; do you want me to be hooted? It's only for an hour. Haven't you any soul?'
Her face and voice were terrible to Ransom; she had flung herself upon Verena and was holding her close, and he could see that her friend's suffering was faint in comparison to her own. 'Why for an hour, when it's all false and damnable? An hour is as bad as ten years! She's mine or she isn't, and if she's mine, she's all mine!'
'Yours! Yours! Verena, think, think what you're doing!' Olive moaned, bending over her.
Mr. Filer was now pouring forth his nature in objurgations and oaths, and brandishing before the culprits— Verena and Ransom—the extreme penalty of the law. Mrs. Tarrant had burst into violent hysterics, while Selah revolved vaguely about the room and declared that it seemed as if the better day was going to be put off for quite a while. 'Don't you see how good, how sweet they are—giving us all this time? Don't you think that when they behave like that—without a sound, for five minutes—they ought to be rewarded?' Verena asked, smiling divinely, at Ransom. Nothing could have been more tender, more exquisite, than the way she put her appeal upon the ground of
