it is in the nature of things that opposition of any
kind arouses the fighting instinct of a naturally dominant nature. She
lost sight of her femininity in the pursuit of her purpose; and as this
was to win the man to her way of thinking, she took the logical course of
answering his argument. If Leonard Everard had purposely set himself to
stimulate her efforts in this direction he could hardly have chosen a
better way. It came somewhat as a surprise to Stephen, when she heard
her own words:

'I would make a good wife, Leonard! A husband whom I loved and honoured
would, I think, not be unhappy!' The sound of her own voice speaking
these words, though the tone was low and tender and more self-suppressing
by far than was her wont, seemed to peal like thunder in her own ears.
Her last bolt seemed to have sped. The blood rushed to her head, and she
had to hold on to the arms of the rustic chair or she would have fallen
forward.

The time seemed long before Leonard spoke again; every second seemed an
age. She seemed to have grown tired of waiting for the sound of his
voice; it was with a kind of surprise that she heard him say:

'You limit yourself wisely, Stephen!'

'How do you mean?' she asked, making a great effort to speak.

'You would promise to love and honour; but there isn't anything about
obeying.'

As he spoke Leonard stretched himself again luxuriously, and laughed with
the intellectual arrogance of a man who is satisfied with a joke, however
inferior, of his own manufacture. Stephen looked at him with a long look
which began in anger--that anger which comes from an unwonted sense of
impotence, and ends in tolerance, the intermediate step being admiration.
It is the primeval curse that a woman's choice is to her husband; and it
is an important part of the teaching of a British gentlewoman, knit in
the very fibres of her being by the remorseless etiquette of a thousand
years, that she be true to him. The man who has in his person the
necessary powers or graces to evoke admiration in his wife, even for a
passing moment, has a stronghold unconquerable as a rule by all the
deadliest arts of mankind.

Leonard Everard was certainly good to look upon as he lolled at his ease
on that summer morning. Tall, straight, supple; a typical British
gentleman of the educated class, with all parts of the body properly
developed and held in some kind of suitable poise.

As Stephen looked, the anxiety and chagrin w