I think you had better leave me."
Trembling, appalled, a prey to an ineffable tangle of emotion, he
sought to plead, to extenuate his attitude, to move her from her
own. He ranted torrentially, but in vain. She stood as cold and
aloof as earlier she had been warm and clinging. He had proved
the measure of his love. He could go his ways.
The thing she proposed was to him, as he had truly said, a
desecration, a defilement. Yet to have dreamed yourself master of
ten million maravedis, and a matchless woman, is a dream not
easily relinquished. There was enough cupidity in his nature,
enough neediness in his condition, to make the realization of
that dream worth the defilement of the abominable marriage rites
upon which she insisted. But fear remained where Christian
scruples were already half-effaced.
"You do not realize," he cried. "If it were known that I so much
as contemplated this, the Holy Office would account it clear
proof of apostasy, and send me to the fire."
"If that were your only objection it were easily overcome," she
informed him coldly. "For who should ever inform against you?
The Rabbi who is waiting above-stairs dare not for his own life's
sake betray us, and who else will ever know?"
"You can be sure of that?"
He was conquered.
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