"You are a gentleman," he continued, "and that presupposes a delicate sense of honor. I know how you feel toward her—yet would you have her remain with you if she one day regretted it? Great things rest on her return, I assure you. Let us start even! You have had two days to persuade her your way; let me have two days to persuade her mine! After that, we fight in the open—you and I!"
There was something straightforward in his appeal that impressed me. I had had two days, and it would be giving her destiny, those great things he spoke of, a square deal to comply. I had misgivings, of course, but these were overruled by—why deny it?—the masculine conceit that becomes assertive after a few feminine favors. At any rate, it was a fair sporting proposition, and I said:
"All right, for two days—provided I explain to her how we made this bargain."
He smiled and hugged me as of yore, crying:
"Almost you would make me sorry when I win! So we fight to the last ditch, eh?"
"To the last ditch," I smiled, shaking hands with him.
But hardly had the agreement been sealed before I regretted it. Tommy's dissertation on sacrifice worried me. And yet, what man with red blood and two wide-open eyes in his heart would have refused to play the cards Monsieur thus honestly laid out? It would be unfair to Doloria's future if I pugnaciously held to the advantage these few days had brought; for it is one thing to start in an open race with men, and run and burst your heart to be first across the goal which means a woman's arms, but quite another to take her unawares in a wilderness and, upon the spot, claim her before she knows what the surrender may involve. In years to follow a time might come when she would look at me through shadows—shadows that grow dark with perplexity over some irrevocable step—and I did not want to sow a seed to ripen into one of these. It is distracting enough for a man to bury his existing ghosts, but sheer madness deliberately to raise a crop of new ones.
In this case I did not so much fear a race with other men in forms of rivals. I had reached my goal, her arms, and nothing could undo that. But her conscience—who dares claim the conscience of another! For two days, then, Monsieur could fight it out alone with her, and if his arguments prevailed—well, I would set about destroying them.
After luncheon, with a brevity that she must have understood meant torture, I explained the compact, saying that I could ask for no more promises until two days had passed; and when she would have replied that her promise had been given I warned her that Monsieur had not even begun to show his power. She seemed a little frightened at this and, but for the sterling mark indubitably pressed upon her sense of right, I think she might have consented to fly from him.
"For two days, then, I'm not to see you," she said simply.