that he might be really suffering,
that she might really have done a hurt to another human being.

This brought her a momentary return of the agitation it had caused in
her that day, and she sat down abruptly on a tree-trunk, her knees
trembling, her hands cold.

That fear had come as so totally unexpected a possibility, something
which his every aspect and tone and word up to then had seemed to
contradict. Strange, how unmoved he had left her, till that moment!
Strange the impression of him, that first time after she had known
herself strong enough to stand up and be herself, not the responsive
instrument played on by every passing impression. Strange, how instantly
he had felt that, and how passionate had been his resentment of her
standing up to be herself, her being a grown woman, a human being, and
not a flower to be plucked. How he had hated it, and alas! how
lamentable his hatred of it had made him appear. What a blow he had
dealt to her conception of him by his instant assumption that a change
in her could only mean that Neale had been bullying her. It had been
_hard_ to see him so far away and diminished as that had made him seem,
so entirely outside her world. It had dealt a back-hand blow to her own
self-esteem to have him seem vulgar.

How strange an experience for her altogether, to be able to stand firm
against noise and urgent clamor and confusion, and to see, in spite of
it, what she was looking at; to see, back of the powerful magnetic
personality, the undeveloped and tyrannical soul, the cramped mind
without experience or conception of breadth and freedom in the relations
between human beings; to be able to hear Vincent cry out on her with
that fierce, masterful certainty of himself, that she was acting from
cowed and traditional-minded motives and not to believe a word of it,
because it was not true; not even to feel the scared throb of alarm at
the very idea that it might be true; to have it make no impression on
her save pity that Vincent should be imprisoned in a feeling of which
possession was so great a part that failure to possess turned all the
rest to poison and sickness.

What had happened to her, in truth, that she had this new steadfastness?
She had told Vincent he could not understand it. Did she understand it
herself? She leaned her chin on her two hands looking deep into the
green recesses of the forest. High above her head, a wind swayed the
tops of the pines and sang loudly; but d