“I can not,” she told him.
“You must!” he immediately rejoined. “As I would build up an empire to win you, I would destroy one to win you. You spoke last night of what you called the cruelty and trickery of the building up of my big transportation monopoly. If it is that which stands between us, it shall not do so for a moment longer. Marry me, and I will stop it just where it is. Why, I only built this for you, and if you don’t like it, I shall have nothing to do with it.” In that he lied, and consciously. He knew that the moment he had made sure of her his ambition to conquer would come uppermost again, and that he would pursue his dream of conquest with even more ardour than before, because he had been refreshed.
“That would make no difference, Mr. Allison,” she replied. “I told you, last night, that I would not marry you because I do not, and could not, love you. There does not need to be any other reason.” There was in her an inexplicable tension, a reflex of his own, but, though her face was still pale, she stood very calmly before him.
The savageness which was in him, held too long in leash, sprang into his face, his eyes, his lips, the set of his jaws. He advanced a step towards her. His hands contracted.
“I shall not again ask you to love me,” he harshly stated; “but you must marry me. I have made up my mind to that.”
“Impossible!” Angry now and contemptuous.
“I’ll make you! There is no resource I will not use. I’ll bankrupt your family. I’ll wipe it off the earth.”
Gail’s nails were pressing into her palms. She felt that her lips were cold. Her eyes were widening, as the horror of him began to grow on her. He was glaring at her now, and there was no attempt to conceal the savage cruelty on his face.
“I’ll compromise you,” he went on. “I’ll connect your name with mine in such a way that marriage with me will be your only resource. I’ll be an influence you can’t escape. There will not be a step you can take in which you will not feel that I am the master of it. Marry you? I’ll have you if it takes ten years! I’ll have no other end in life. I’ll put into that one purpose all the strength, and all the will that I have put into the accomplishment of everything which I have done; and the longer you delay me the sooner I’ll break you when I do get you.”
Out of her very weakness had come strength; out of her overwhelming humiliation had come pride, and though the blood had left her face waxen and cold, something within her discovered a will which was as strong in resistance as his was in attack. She knew it, and trembled in the knowledge of it.