er forgotten
Hamlen's domination over her as a girl. At the moment when she met him
so unexpectedly in Bermuda she felt the old-time sensation of dread she
had experienced so many times when alone with him during their childhood
days and the period of their engagement. She had never loved him; this
knowledge had come clearly to her during the years which had
intervened. When she accepted the tacit understanding of an engagement
it was because of the dominating influence of his mind over hers rather
than a response from her heart to his fierce devotion. The break came on
the occasion of the Senior Dance at Harvard to which she accepted Monty
Huntington's escort. Hamlen, bitter against college and college life,
and having no interest in the graduating festivities, not only refused
to attend the dance but forbade her to go without him. Her indignation
gave her strength to rebel against his domination. Later she sailed for
Europe, feeling a profound sense of relief that she had been able to
break the fetters which had bound her, she then realized, against her
will.

The Hamlen she met at Bermuda was not the unreasonable boy of twenty
years before. He was still bitter, but they met on terms which gave her
the ascendency. Those traits which she had admired were accentuated, and
the fierce intensity had become modified. Now it was her mind which
controlled and his which yielded. He had tried to hold out against her
in refusing to come to America, but he had yielded; he was now trying to
hold out against her judgment that his marriage to Merry would restore
the lost equilibrium, but again he would yield.

Still, above all other considerations, the great fact stood out in
Marian's mind that the match itself was ideal. Merry would find in him
an intellectual force which would satisfy her natural predilections; she
would give him in her spontaneity a leaven to perpetuate the normal
expressions of life which Huntington had taught him to understand. She
would give him the youth which he had lost, he would give her the
response which her unusual development could never obtain from a younger
man. The balance was perfect. The mother's heart rejoiced that her
efforts could make so noble a gift to her daughter, while the woman's
heart found equal satisfaction that these same efforts could pay the
debt of years in ample measure.

It would have been a relief if her plans for entertaining the Bermuda
party could have been carried through