"—You, and you alone, can help me. As I have said, I can influence the girl, you can influence him. I have worked hard for that influence—have plotted, and planned, and schemed for it. Cleverness, ingenuity—call it what you will—has been exerted by me; you have only to exert your—pardon me—your beauty."
With a gesture, she drew the shawl nearer her face—it was like profanation to hear him speak of her beauty.
"—Together we conquer; alone, I think, we should fail, for though I hold her in a cleft stick I cannot answer for him. He is headstrong and wild, and in a moment might upset my plans. Your task—if you accept it—is to see that he does not. Will you accept it?"
She paused.
"What is your hold over her?" she asked, curiously.
He smiled.
"Pardon me if I decline to answer. Be assured that I have a hold upon her. Your hold on him is as strong as that of mine on her. Will you exert it?"
She was silent.
"Think," he said. "Let me put the case clearly. For his own good you ought not to hesitate. What good can come of such a marriage—a viscount, an earl, marry the niece of a painter, an obscure nobody! It is for his own good—the husband of Stella—I forgot!—no names. As her husband he sinks into insignificance, as yours he rises to the height which his position and yours entitle him to. Can you hesitate?"
No tempter since the world began, not even the serpent at the foot of the apple-tree in Eden, could have put it more ingeniously. She wavered. Reluctant to make a compact with a man and a stranger, and such a man! She stood and hesitated.