ed.

Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and humbled.
But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with sorrow and the
load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and lifeless within him.
Reaction from his former attitude of aggression and defiance had carried
him far beyond the normal.

Here widened the difference between the man and the woman. Lloyd's
discontinuance of her life-work had been in the nature of heroic
subjugation of self. Bennett's abandonment of his career was hardly
better than weakness. In the one it had been renunciation; in the other
surrender. In the end, and after all was over, it was the woman who
remained the stronger.

But for her, the woman, was it true that all was over? Had the last
conflict been fought? Was it not rather to be believed that life was one
long conflict? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that sluggard
ambition? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspiration, his
incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great work? Now, of
the two, she was the stronger. In these new conditions what was her
duty? Adler's clumsy phrases persisted in her mind. "That's his work,"
Adler had said. "God Almighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do
it. Don't let him chuck, don't let him get soft; make him be a man and
not a professor."

Had she so much influence over Bennett? Could she rouse the restless,
daring spirit again? Perhaps; but what would it mean for her--for her,
who must be left behind to wait, and wait, and wait--for three years,
for five years, for ten years--perhaps forever? And now, at this moment,
when she believed that at last happiness had come to her; when the duty
had been done, the grim problems solved; when sickness had been
overcome; when love had come back, and the calm, untroubled days seemed
lengthening out ahead, there came to her recollection the hideous lapse
of time that had intervened between the departure of the Freja and the
expedition's return; what sleepless nights, what days of unspeakable
suspense, what dreadful alternations between hope and despair, what
silent, repressed suffering, what haunting, ever-present dread of a
thing she dared not name! Was the Fear to come into her life again; the
Enemy that lurked and leered and forebore to strike, that hung upon her
heels at every hour of the day, that sat down with her to her every
occupation, that followed after when she stirred abroad, that came close