For the moment Lloyd caught her breath.  For the moment she saw clearly with just what sort of man she had to deal.  There was a conviction in his manner—­now that he had quieted himself—­that suddenly appeared unanswerable.  It was like the slow, still moving of a piston.

But the next moment her own character reasserted itself.  She remembered what she was herself.  If he was determined, she was obstinate; if he was resolved, she was stubborn; if he was powerful, she was unyielding.  Never had she conceded her point before; never had she allowed herself to be thwarted in the pursuance of a course she believed to be right.  Was she, of all women, to yield now?  The consciousness of her own power of resistance came suddenly to her aid.  Bennett was strong, but was she not strong herself?  Where under the blue sky was the power that could break down her will?  When death itself could not prevail against her, what in life could shake her resolution?

Suddenly the tremendous import of the moment, the magnitude of the situation, flashed upon Lloyd.  Both of them had staked everything upon this issue.  Two characters of extraordinary power clashed violently together.  There was to be no compromise, no half-measures.  Either she or Bennett must in the end be beaten.  One of them was to be broken and humbled beyond all retrieving.  There in that commonplace little room, with its trivial accessories, its inadequate background, a battle royal swiftly prepared itself.  With the abruptness of an explosion the crisis developed.

“Do I need to tell you,” remarked Bennett, “that your life is rather more to me than any other consideration in the world?  Do you suppose when the lives of every member of my command depended upon me I was any less resolved to succeed than I am now?  I succeeded then, and I shall succeed now, now when there is much more at stake.  I am not accustomed to failure, and I shall not fail now.  I assure you that I shall stop at nothing.”

It was beyond Lloyd to retain her calmness under such aggression.  It seemed as though her self-respect demanded that she should lose her temper.

“And you think you can drive me as you drove your deck-hands?” she exclaimed.  “What have you to do with me?  Am I your subordinate?  Do you think you can bully me?  We are not in Kolyuchin Bay, Mr. Bennett.”

“You’re the woman I love,” he answered with an abrupt return of vehemence, “and, by God!  I shall stop at nothing to save your life.”

“And my love for you, that you pretend is so much to you, I suppose that this is the means you take to awaken it.  Admitting, for the moment, that you could induce me to shirk my duty, how should I love you for it?  Ask yourself that.”

But Bennett had but one answer to all her words.  He struck his fist into the palm of his hand as he answered: 

“Your life is more to me than any other consideration.”

“But my life—­how do you know it is a question of my life?  Come, if we are to quarrel, let us quarrel upon reasonable grounds.  It does not follow that I risk my life by staying—­”