Thorne stood silent, his head bent in thought. "Yes," he said presently; "it will be better so. You are overwrought, and your mind is worn with excitement; you need rest. To-morrow, next week, the week after, this matter will wear a different aspect. I can wait, and I will come again. It will be different then."
"It will never be different," the voice was low; the gray eyes had a hopeless look.
Thorne repeated his assertion in the gentle, persistent tone of one who is patient with the unreasonableness of a frightened child. His determination to win success never faltered, rather it hardened with opposition into adamant; but he was beginning to realize his blunder. He had overwhelmed her; had brought about an upheaval of her world so violent that, in her bewilderment, her dread of chaos, she instinctively laid hold on the old supports and clung to them with desperation. She must have time to think, to familiarize herself with the strange emotions, to adapt herself to the changed conditions. Only one other thing would he say. He held in reserve a card which he knew, ere now, had proved all powerful with conscientious women. To gain his end, he would stop at nothing; he took both her hands in his, and played his card deliberately.
"Think over it well," he said, "weigh every argument, test every scruple. My life is in your hands. I am not a religious man, nor a good man, but you can make me both. Give me the heaven that I crave, the heaven of your love, and I will be by it ennobled into faith in that other heaven, of which it will be the foretaste. But refuse; deny the soul that cries out to you; thrust aside the hands that seek to clasp you, as the truest, noblest, holiest thing they have ever touched, and—on your head be it. I have placed the responsibility in your hands and there it rests."
With a lingering look into her eyes and a fervent pressure of her hands, he turned and slowly left the room.
Back to the mind of the girl, standing motionless where he had left her, came, unwished and unbidden, the memory of a summer night out yonder beside the flowing river. She seemed to see again, the swaying of the branches in the moonlight, and to hear the lulling wash of the water against the shore; to hear also, a quiet, manly voice fighting down its pain, lest the knowledge of it should wound her, saying, simply and bravely: "Don't be unhappy about me, dear. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life either, although it must mar it; a man must be a pitiful fellow who lets himself go to the bad because the woman he loves won't have him. God means every man to hold up his own weight in this world. I'd as soon knock a woman down as throw the blame of a wasted life upon her."
Plain words, poorly arranged and simply spoken, for the man who uttered them was not clever; but brave, manly words, for all that. The girl turned from the unwelcome memory with a sharp, impatient sigh that was almost a groan. It pained her.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The next day Thorne quietly returned to New York, without making any attempt to see or communicate with Pocahontas again. He had considered the situation earnestly, and decided that it would be his wisest course. Like a skilled general, he recognized the value of delay. Failing to carry the citadel by assault, he resorted to strategy. In the girl's love for him, he possessed a powerful ally; there was a traitor in the camp of his adversary, and sooner or later it would be betrayed into his hands; of this he was convinced, and the conviction fortified him to trust the result to time. Pride and principle were in arms now, holding love in check, but it would not be so always; soon her woman's heart would speak, would wield an influence more powerful and resistless, from the concentration engendered by repression. Now, too, she was braced by the excitement of personal resistance; she was measuring her will, with his will, her strength with his strength. Let him withdraw for a time, and what would follow? The outside pressure, the immediate need of concentrated effort removed, there would inevitably ensue a state of collapse; purpose and prejudice would sink exhausted, the strain on the will relax, the weapons fall from the nerveless hands. Then the heart would rally its forces, would collect its strength for the field; external conflict suspended, internal strife would commence, fierce, cruel and relentless as internecine struggles ever are. Was there any doubt of the result of the battle? It only needed time. Time, quietude, and earnest thought, free from the disturbing, stimulating power of his presence.
He could wait; every affection of her loving, constant heart, every fiber of her self-sacrificing nature, would fight for him; prejudices, even the most deeply-rooted, must yield, in time, to love. When he should come again it would be to claim his victory.