until she turned her face away from him. "Look at me," he cried. "Dear, troubled eyes. Tears? Tears in them? Love, you have kept nothing back this time, and now it is my turn, but I shall keep something back from you. I'm not going to reprove your idolatry by turning iconoclast and throwing your miserable old idol down from his pedestal all at once. I tell you what it is, though, if I could feel that I was worthy of your smallest finger—that I deserved only one of those big tears—there—there—there! Listen, dearest, I'll come to the point.
"Who is it now, making so much of the estimates of the world? Somehow our viewpoints have got mixed. Sacrifice myself? Why, Cassandra, if I were to lose you out of my life, I should be a broken-hearted man. What did I sacrifice? Phantoms, vanities, and emptiness. Oh, Cassandra, Cassandra, my priestess of all that is good! Open your eyes, love, and see as I see—as you have taught me to see.
"Much that we strive for and reckon as gain is really worthless. Why, sweet, I would far, far rather have you at your loom for the mother of my son, than Lady Clara at her piano. Your heritage of the great nature—the far-seeing—the trusting spirit—harboring no evil and construing all things to righteousness—going out into the world and finding among all the dust and dross, even of centuries, only the pure gold—the eye that sees into a man's soul, searching out the true and lovely qualities there and transmuting all the rest into pure metal—my own soul's alchemist—your heritage is the secret of power."