he vaunted illimitable power that
is called love could she discern. Love he possessed; that she had not
doubted, and did not doubt, even now. But it had been given her to see
that these springs had existed before love had come, and would flow,
perchance, after it had departed. Now she understood his anger; it was
like the anger of a fiercely rushing river striving to break a dam and
invade the lands below with devastating floods. All these months the
waters had been mounting....

Turning at length from the consideration of this figure, she asked
herself whether, if with her present knowledge she had her choice to
make over again, she would have chosen differently. The answer was a
startling negative. She loved him. Incomprehensible, unreasonable, and
un reasoning sentiment! That she had received a wound, she knew; whether
it were mortal, or whether it would heal and leave a scar, she could not
say. One salient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she
sank back upon the pillows she was lost. Little it would profit her to
save her body. She had no choice between her present precarious foothold
and the abyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight. There was
no retreat:

She sat up, and presently got to her feet and went to the window and
stared through the panes until she distinguished the blue whiteness of
the fallen snow on her little balcony. The night, despite the clouds,
had a certain luminous quality. Then she drew the curtains, searched for
the switch, and flooded the room with a soft glow--that beautiful
room in which he had so proudly installed her four months before. She
smoothed the bed, and walking to the mirror gazed intently at her
face, and then she bathed it. Afterwards she opened her window again,
admitting a flurry of snow, and stood for some minutes breathing in the
sharp air.

Three quarters of an hour later she was dressed and descending the
stairs, and as she entered the library dinner was announced. Let us
spare Honora the account of that repast or rather a recital of the
conversation that accompanied it. What she found to say under the eyes
of the servants is of little value, although the fact itself deserves to
be commended as a high accomplishment; and while she talked, she studied
the brooding mystery that he presented, and could make nothing of it.
His mood was new. It was not sullenness, nor repressed rage; and his
answers were brief, but he was not taciturn. It struc