casions, the manner in
which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to
caution him, to keep him in check. Again, on the evening excursions to
which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented
spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to
ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her
by sight. These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she
seemed conscious of curious glances. But what caused her the most concern
was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself subjected
her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly difficult to
resist. He tried to take her by storm, and when this method failed,
resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny because of
the innate feminine pity she felt for him. To recount these affairs would
be a mere repetition of identical occurrences. On their second Sunday
excursion he had actually driven her, despite her opposition, several
miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only served to inflame him
the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat unnerved, a miracle that she
had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she would not trust him; they
could not be married at once; she must understand that!--an argument so
repugnant as to cause her to shake with sobs of inarticulate anger. After
this he would grow bewildered, then repentant, then contrite. In
contrition--had he known it--he was nearest to victory.

As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core
of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its
roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element
wanting in her sister Lise. It must have been largely the thought of
Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that
dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was
another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern
atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many
undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the
American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her
liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to
lose Ditmar's love....

No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy
by any means wholly on this plane of conflict. There were hours when,
Ditmar's passion leaving s