He realised that there was a generous weakness in her own heart on which he might have played.

But he would not play; his fixed intention was to disappear as soon as possible from her life; and it was his honest hope that she would marry in her own world and forget him.

In fact he was the prey of a kind of moral terror that here also, as in the case of his father, he might make some ghastly mistake, pursuing his own will under the guise of love, as he had once pursued it under the guise of retribution--to Elizabeth's hurt and his own remorse.
All this Elizabeth understood, more or less plainly.

Then came the question--granted the situation, how was she to deal with it?
Just as he surmised that he could win her if he would, she too believed that were she merely to set herself to prove her own love and evoke his, she could probably break down his resistance.

A woman knows her own power.
Feverishly, Elizabeth was sometimes on the point of putting it out, of so provoking and appealing to the passion she divined, as to bring him, whether he would or no, to her feet.
But she hesitated.