And so, to condense all that Jeremy has recorded in the matter,
Blood ended by yielding to external and internal pressure, abandoned
himself to the stream of Destiny. "Fata viam invenerunt," is his
own expression of it.
If he resisted so long, it was, I think, the thought of Arabella
Bishop that restrained him. That they should be destined never to
meet again did not weigh at first, or, indeed, ever. He conceived
the scorn with which she would come to hear of his having turned
pirate, and the scorn, though as yet no more than imagined, hurt
him as if it were already a reality. And even when he conquered
this, still the thought of her was ever present. He compromised
with the conscience that her memory kept so disconcertingly active.
He vowed that the thought of her should continue ever before him
to help him keep his hands as clean as a man might in this desperate
trade upon which he was embarking. And so, although he might
entertain no delusive hope of ever winning her for his own, of ever
even seeing her again, yet the memory of her was to abide in his
soul as a bitter-sweet, purifying influence.
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