"No; I'll not bind myself in any way. I'll not promise to marry you even if you should win. It was you who made me wait, and now I shall make sure. Unless I feel certain that we would be bound together for all time by the deepest, truest love, I know it would be a mistake. If I were certain, right now, that you lack the strength to conquer yourself for the sake of your own manhood, I would accept Lord James."
Whether or not the girl was capable of such an act, there could be no doubt that she meant what she said, and her tone carried conviction to Blake. He was silent for a long moment. When he replied, it was in a voice dull and heavy with despondency. "You don't realize what you're putting me up against."
"I realize that you must clear away all my doubt of your strength," she rejoined, with no lessening of her firmness. "You were strong there on that savage coast, in the primitive. But you must prove yourself strong enough to rise out of the primitive—to rise to your true, your higher self."
He bent as if he were being crushed under a ponderous weight. His voice dulled to a half articulate murmur. "You—won't—help—me?"
"I cannot—I dare not!" she insisted almost fiercely. "If I did I should doubt. This dreadful fear! You must prove you're strong! You must master yourself for the sake of your own manhood!"
At last he was forced to realize that it was necessity, not desire, that impelled her to thrust him from her. He must fight his hard battle alone—he must fight without even the thought that he had her sympathy.
He should have divined that she would be secretly hoping, perhaps praying for him, striving for him in spirit with all the might of her true love. But by her insistence she had at last compelled him to doubt her love.
He thought of the many times that he had gone down in disgraceful defeat, and black despair fell upon him. His broad shoulders stooped yet more.
"What's the use?" he muttered thickly.
But the question itself served as the goad to quicken all his immense reserve of endurance. He looked up at Genevieve, heavy-eyed but grim with determination.