dually Elizabeth was getting a view of the real trouble. Two
things absorbed her attention: one was the domination of men, and the
other was the need of money adjustment. To live under the continual
interference of a man who refused to listen to the story of one's needs
was bad enough, but to live without an income while one had a small child
was worse. She would leave this phase of her difficulties at times and
wander back to the character of the treatment she received and compare it
to that accorded to her mother. It occasioned great surprise to find
herself admiring her father's manner more than that of her husband. Mr.
Farnshaw had the virtue of frankness in his mastery, John used
subterfuges; Mr. Farnshaw was openly brutal, John secretly heartless; her
father was a domineering man, her husband even more determined, more
inflexible. While considering the possibility of escape by running away,
many things were clarified in Elizabeth's mind regarding her position as a
wife, and the position of all wives. She, for the first time, began to see
the many whips which a determined husband had at his command, chief of
which was the crippling processes of motherhood. She could not teach
school--Jack was too young; neither could she take any other work and keep
the child with her. As she meditated upon the impossibility of the various
kinds of work a woman could do, another phase of her situation arose
before her: even if the baby were older, and a school easily obtained, the
gossip that would follow a separation would be unendurable. Having
accumulated a reputation for snobbishness and aristocratic seclusion,
people would not neglect so rare an opportunity to even old scores. She
would be a grass widow, a subject for all the vulgar jest and loathsome
wit of the community. Country people know how to sting and annoy in a
thousand ways. However, the possibility of this sort of retribution was
put entirely away by the baby's illness. By the time Jack had recovered,
the young mother was worn to a lifeless machine, compelled to accept what
came to her. Her youth, her health, her strength were gone; worse than all
that, her interest in things, in her own affairs even, had almost gone.

John wandered about the house disconsolate and dissatisfied, and made
amends in curious little ways, and from John's standpoint. He opened
relations with Elizabeth's family and insisted upon taking her home for a
visit. Elizabeth went with him, and acce