ssion of a master is--unconsciously to
themselves--the only possible completion of their lives. In ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of
the otherwise inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own
free will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her. This
one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise inexplicable
facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs. Glenarm.

Up to the time of her meeting with Geoffrey, the young widow had
gathered but one experience in her intercourse with the world--the
experience of a chartered tyrant. In the brief six months of her married
life with the man whose grand-daughter she might have been--and ought to
have been--she had only to lift her finger to be obeyed. The doting old
husband was the willing slave of the petulant young wife's slightest
caprice. At a later period, when society offered its triple welcome to
her birth, her beauty, and her wealth--go where she might, she found
herself the object of the same prostrate admiration among the suitors
who vied with each other in the rivalry for her hand. For the first time
in her life she encountered a man with a will of his own when she met
Geoffrey Delamayn at Swanhaven Lodge.

Geoffrey's occupation of the moment especially favored the conflict
between the woman's assertion of her influence and the man's assertion
of his will.

During the days that had intervened between his return to his brother's
house and the arrival of the trainer, Geoffrey had submitted himself
to all needful preliminaries of the physical discipline which was to
prepare him for the race. He knew, by previous experience, what exercise
he ought to take, what hours he ought to keep, what temptations at the
table he was bound to resist. Over and over again Mrs. Glenarm tried to
lure him into committing infractions of his own discipline--and over
and over again the influence with men which had never failed her before
failed her now. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do, would move
_this_ man. Perry arrived; and Geoffrey's defiance of every attempted
exercise of the charming feminine tyranny, to which every one else had
bowed, grew more outrageous and more immovable than ever. Mrs. Glenarm
became as jealous of Perry as if Perry had been a woman. She flew
into passions; she burst into tears; she flirted with other men; she
threatened to leave the house. All quite useless! Geoffrey never