have dismissed the subject
under discussion and the faithful Dimsdale simultaneously from her mind.

After a few seconds the old butler realised this, and without further ado
he removed the tea-things and went quietly away.

Anne did not notice his departure. She was too deep in thought. Her
brain was steadier now, and she found it possible to think. For the first
time she was asking herself if she would be justified in bringing her
long martyrdom to an end. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain,
patiently, conscientiously, unflaggingly, throughout those seven bitter
years. She had married her husband without loving him, and he had never
sought to win her love. He had married her for the sake of conquering
her, attracted by the very coldness with which she had tried in her
girlhood to repel him. She had caught his fancy in those far-off days.
Her queenliness, her grace, had captivated him. And later, with the sheer
hunter's instinct, he had pursued her, and had eventually discovered a
means of entrapping her. He had named his conditions and she had named
hers. In the end he had dispatched the father to Canada and made the
daughter his wife.

But his fancy for her had scarcely outlasted his capture. He had taken
pleasure for a while in humiliating her, counting it sport if he
succeeded in arousing her rare indignation. But soon even this had ceased
to amuse him. He had developed into that most odious of all bullies, the
domestic tyrant, and had therewith sunk back into those habits of
intemperance which his marriage had scarcely interrupted. He was many
years her senior. He treated her as a slave, and if now and then an
uncomfortable sensation of inferiority assailed him, he took his revenge
upon her in evil, glowering tempers that rendered him more of a beast
than a man.

But yet she had borne with him. By neither word nor action had she ever
voluntarily widened the breach between them: His growing dislike had not
had any visible effect upon her. She had done her duty faithfully through
all, had borne his harshness and his insults in silence, with a patience
too majestic, too colossal, for his understanding.

And now for the first time she asked herself, Did he want to be rid of
her? Had he invented this monstrous grievance to drive her from him? Were
the days of her bondage indeed drawing at last to an end? Had she borne
with him long enough? Was she free--was she free to go?

Her heart quickened at the bare