ies. Certainly her life
appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at
all--that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed,
thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood. Heart, mind, spirit,
all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no
eluding--the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage. Those
were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence--the days when all the
vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned
things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.

Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to
question whether she might not write once more. What she felt for
Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out
altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's
maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet. And in her
conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it,
her very genuine affection for Ted--despite all the differences of
temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and
resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her--was her greatest
source of strength. But though she thus armed herself with her
affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to
him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of
wifely duty now. And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her
compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding. Even
before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject,
Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had
been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident
and Ted's opinions. And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as
"morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's
only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila
to the conclusion that her vow could not--_should_ not!--bind her. At
last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself
the more free for work because love must be denied. Her work should be
her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having
must be earned--by what one suffers for them. And she believed that
her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that
she had endured. It would be the better for that secret, unceasing
ache of her heart for a love forbi