The temptation was powerful, and the Thug yielded to it, without a struggle.
"And if he should, darling? What then?" he said, tightening his arm about her waist.
"You should not ask me!" in a yet lower whisper.
Had the dusk allowed, she might have seen a smile of triumph upon his face; an involuntary uprearing of the head as from the binding of the bay of victory about his brows. In affections and in spirit, she lay at his feet—her love confessed, her destiny in his power. Did he wish, for one insane instant, that his acting were reality, that, with clean heart and hands, he could fold her in his embrace, and call her by the name which is the seal and glory of loving womanhood? make her his honored and beloved Wife?
We are all human, and there may have gaped in that one wild second, an hitherto unsuspected joint in his harness of unscrupulous egotism. If this were so, he conquered the weakness before he again spoke.
"Jessie, this is sheer madness! My beautiful angel! why have you made me love you only that both our hearts should be broken at last? Do you know what you are doing? Do not injure yourself fatally in the estimation of all your friends by cancelling this engagement. Your father has talked much to me of the comfort it is to him. He loves and honors Fordham; is happy in his old age in the anticipation of giving you into his keeping. This will be a crushing blow to his pride and affection. And Fordham! you do not comprehend what a terrible thing his anger is. I, who have seen him aroused, warn you not to make him your lifelong enemy. These calm, slow natures are vindictive beyond the possibility of your conception."
"Yet you would have me trust myself and my happiness in his keeping? When I have said that I do not love him! Have you read my nature to so little purpose as to think that fear will drive, where affection does not lead me?"
Her spirit was rising. He knew the signs of her mood, and that the sharpest of the struggle between her will and his was to come. He made ready his last shaft.
"Leave things as they are! If I plead earnestly, it is because there is so much at stake. For me, as for you! Do not tempt me to perjury and dishonor. Help me to keep my integrity by holding fast to your own! Believe me, who have seen more of life and human inconsistency than your virgin fancy ever pictured, when I say that crossed loves are the rule, love-marriages the exception in this crooked, shadowed world. By and by, you—both of us—will learn quietness of soul, if not content, and nobody surmise the secret of the locked heart-chambers which are consecrated to one another."
"Perjury! dishonor!" repeated Jessie, bewildered. "By what oath are you bound? I do not understand!"