Part 24 (2/2)

”But I'm not asking anything--only in case I make good.”

”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.

”You don't know what you've put me up against,” he said. ”But I'll not lay down yet. n.o.body ever called me a quitter. You've a right to ask me to make good. I'll make a stagger at it. Good-bye!”

He turned from her and walked up the room with the steady deliberation of one who bears a heavy burden.

It was almost more than she could endure. She started to dart after him, and her lips parted to utter an entreaty for him to come back to her. But her spirit had been tempered in that fierce struggle for life on the savage coast of Mozambique.

She checked herself, and waited until, without a backward glance, he had pa.s.sed out through the curtained doorway. Then, and not until then, she sank down in her chair and gave way to the anguish of her love and doubt and dread.

CHAPTER XIII

PLANS AND OTHER PLANS

A quarter after nine the next morning found Griffith at the door of Mr.

Leslie's sanctum. He stuffed his gauntlet gloves into a pocket of his old fur coat, and entered the office, his worn, dark eyes vague with habitual abstraction.

Mr. Leslie was in the midst of his phonographic dictation. He abruptly stopped the machine and whirled about in his swivel-chair to face the engineer.

”Sit down,” he said. ”How's the Zariba Dam?”

”No progress,” answered Griffith with terse precision. He sat down with an air of complete absorption in the act, drew out an old knife and his pipe, and observed: ”You didn't send for me for that.”

”How's the bridge?”

”Same,” croaked the engineer, beginning to sc.r.a.pe out the bowl of his pipe with the one unbroken blade of his knife.

”That young fool still running around town?”

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