of
Appeal had reversed her verdict while she slept. Her first
thought had been, "I'm going to marry Lawrence!" For he needed
her: that was what she had forgotten last night: by his parade of
wealth he had defeated his own ends, but, her first anger over,
she had realized that one should no more refuse a man for being
rich, than accept him. Far other were the grounds on which that
decision had to be made. It had been pity that carried Isabel
away. Perhaps in any case she could not have held out for long.

Did she expect to be happy? Scarcely, for she did not trust him
enough to be frank with him. Sophisticated men soon tire of candid
women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such
an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more
inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested
in his arms. Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf:
ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of
the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a
June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human
weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all
were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them,
for Hyde had none. Within the limits of his code of honour he would
simply do as he liked. And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel
would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to
him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red
roses and sunshine and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost
self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she
the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.

But there should be compromise: one must not--one need not--cheat
him of the pride of his manhood. Isabel's heart ached for
her lover. She could not defend herself against him any longer,
and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, "You may
yield now. Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well
as unkind."

She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some
change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe
had vanished. His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen
who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt
or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he
began to taste the sweetness of his victory. "Have I won you?"
he whispered, his voice as