for, as there is a God in heaven, I believe you love me, even as I love you.  Oh, my love! my love!” his voice melted, his arms closed around her.  “Why do you try me beyond my strength?  Why are you so cruel to us both?  See; I hold you safely; your heart beats on mine; your dear face is on my breast.  Stay with me, my darling, my own, my wife;” and soft, clinging passionate kisses pressed down on hair, and cheek, and lips; kisses that burned like flame, that thrilled like strong wine.

For a moment Pocahontas lay quietly in his arms, lulled into quiescence.  Then she wrenched herself free, and moved away from him.  It had been said of her that she could be hard upon occasion; the occasion had arisen, and she was hard.

“Go!” she said, her face wan as ashes, but her voice firm; “it is you who are cruel; you who are blind and obstinate.  You will neither see nor understand why this thing may not be.  I have showed you my thought, and you will not bend; implored you to have pity, and you are merciless.  And yet you talk of love!  You love me, and would sacrifice me to your love; love me, and would break down the bulwarks I have been taught to consider righteous, to gratify your love.  I do not understand; love seemed to me so different, so noble and unselfish.  Leave me; I am tired; I want to think it out alone.”

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.”