. From
that point of view it would have been far wiser to persist in rejecting
legal marriage, that her dependence upon him might be more complete.
Later, if all went well, the concession could have been made--if, for
instance, she became a mother. But then returned the exasperating
thought that Rhoda had overcome his will. Was not that a beginning of
evil augury?

To be sure, after marriage their relations would be different. He would
not then be at the mercy of his senses. But how miserable to anticipate
a long, perhaps bitter, struggle for predominance. After all, that
could hardly come about. The commencement of any such discord would be
the signal for separation. His wealth assured his freedom. He was not
like the poor devils who must perforce live with an intolerable woman
because they cannot support themselves and their families in different
places. Need he entertain that worst of fears--the dread that his
independence might fail him, subdued by his wife's will?

Free as he boasted himself from lover's silliness, he had magnified
Rhoda's image. She was not the glorious rebel he had pictured. Like any
other woman, she mistrusted her love without the sanction of society.
Well, that was something relinquished, lost. Marriage would after all
be a compromise. He had not found his ideal--though in these days it
assuredly existed.

* * *

And Rhoda, sitting late in the little lodging-house parlour, visited
her soul with questionings no less troublesome. Everard was not
satisfied with her. He had yielded, perhaps more than half
contemptuously, to what he thought a feminine weakness. In going with
her to the registrar's office he would feel himself to be acting an
ignoble part. Was it not a bad beginning to rule him against his
conscience?

She had triumphed splendidly. In the world's eye this marriage of hers
was far better than any she could reasonably have hoped, and her heart
approved it with rapture. At a stage in life when she had sternly
reconciled herself never to know a man's love, this love had sought her
with passionate persistency of which even a beautiful young girl might
feel proud. She had no beauty; she was loved for her mind, her very
self. But must not Everard's conception of her have suffered? In
winning her had he obtained the woman of his desire?

Why was she not more politic? Would it not have been possible to
gratify him, and yet to gain his consent to legal marriage? By first of
all comply