It was the old struggle in which they were so evenly matched—of the woman to preserve her poise; of the man to break it down. Another lover might have given up in despair, but Ormsby's strength lay in holding on in the face of all discouragements.
"I believe, as much as I believe anything in this world, that you were mistaken in regard to your feeling for the other man," he went on calmly. "But I want you to be sure of that for yourself, and you can't be sure unless you are free to choose between us."
"Oh, don't!—you shouldn't say such things to me," she broke out; and then he knew he was gaining ground.
"Yes, I must. We have been stumbling around in the dark all these months, and I mean to be the lantern-bearer for once in a way. You know, and I know, and Kent is coming to know. That man is going to be a success, Elinor: he has it in him, and he sha'n't lack the money-backing he may need. When he arrives——"
She turned on him quickly, and the blue-gray eyes were suspiciously bright.
"Please don't bury me alive," she begged.
He saw what he had done; that the nicely calculated purpose had carried straight and true to its mark; and for a moment the mixed motives, which are at the bottom of most human sayings and doings, surged in him like the sea at the vexed tide-line of an iron-bound coast. But it was the better Brookes Ormsby that struggled up out of the elemental conflict.
"Don't mistake me," he said. "I am neither better nor worse than other men, I fancy. My motives, such as they are, would probably turn out to be purely selfish in the last analysis. I am proceeding on the theory that constraint breeds the desire for the thing it forbids; therefore I remove it. Also, it is a part of that theory that the successful David Kent will not appeal to you as the unspoiled country lawyer did. No, I'm not going to spoil him; if I were, I shouldn't be telling you about it. But—may I be brutally frank?—the David Kent who will come successfully out of this political prize-fight will not be the man you have idealized."
There was a muttering of thunder in the air, and the cool precursory breeze of a shower was sweeping through the tree-tops.
"Shall we go into the house?" she asked; and he took it as his dismissal.