e, to go back
into it monstrous. And yet, so far as she could see, there was no way of
escape. She was not apparently to be allowed to make any friends outside
her own sphere. The freedom she had begun to enjoy so feverishly had very
suddenly been circumscribed, and if she dared to overstep the bounds
marked out for her, she knew what to expect.

And yet she longed for freedom as she had never longed in her life
before. She was nearly desperate with longing, so sweet had been the
first, intoxicating taste thereof. For the first time she had seen life
from the standpoint of the ordinary, happy girl, and the contrast to the
life she knew had temporarily upset her equilibrium. Her mother's
treatment, harsh before, seemed unendurable now. Her cheeks burned afresh
with a fierce, intolerable shame. No, no! She could never face it again.
She could not! She could not! Already her brief emancipation had begun to
cost her dear. She must--she must--find a way of escape ere she went back
into thraldom. For she knew her mother's strength so terribly well. It
would conquer all resistance by sheer, overwhelming weight. She could not
remember a single occasion upon which she had ever in the smallest degree
held her own against it. Her will had been broken to her mother's so
often that the very thought of prolonged resistance seemed absurd. She
knew herself to be incapable of it. She was bound to crumple under the
strain, bound to be humbled to the dust long ere the faintest hope of
outmatching her mother's iron will had begun to dawn in her soul. The
very thought made her feel puny and contemptible. If she resisted to the
very uttermost of her strength, yet would she be crushed in the end, and
that end would be more horribly painful than she dared to contemplate.
All her childhood it had been the same. She had been conquered ere she
had passed the threshold of rebellion. She had never been permitted to
exercise a will of her own, and the discovery that she possessed one had
been something of a surprise to Dinah.

It was partly this discovery that made her long so passionately for
freedom. She wanted to grow, to develop, to get beyond the stultifying
influence of that unvarying despotism. She longed to get away from the
perpetual dread of consequences that so haunted her. She wanted to
breathe her own atmosphere, live her own life, be herself.

"I believe I could do lots of things if I only had the chance," she
murmured to herself; an