how they had been shaped anew in the mould of
circumstance!

Suddenly and without warning, they two, high-spirited, strong,
determined, had clashed together, the man's force against the woman's
strength; and the woman, inherently weaker, had been crushed and
humbled. For a time it seemed to her that she had been broken beyond
hope; so humbled that she could never rise again; as though a great
crisis had developed in her life, and that, having failed once, she must
fail again, and again, and again--as if her whole subsequent life must
be one long failure. But a greater crisis had followed hard upon the
heels of the first--the struggle with self, the greatest struggle of
all. Against the abstract principle of evil the woman who had failed in
the material conflict with a masculine, masterful will, had succeeded,
had conquered self, had been true when it was easy to be false, had
dared the judgment of her peers so only that she might not deceive.

Her momentary, perhaps fancied, hatred of Bennett, who had so cruelly
misunderstood and humiliated her, had apparently, of its own accord,
departed from her heart. Then had come the hour when the strange hazard
of fortune had reversed their former positions, when she could be
masterful while he was weak; when it was the man's turn to be broken, to
be prevailed against. Her own discomfiture had been offset by his. She
no longer need look to him as her conqueror, her master. And when she
had seen him so weak, so pathetically unable to resist the lightest
pressure of her hand; when it was given her not only to witness but to
relieve his suffering, the great love for him that could not die had
returned. With the mastery of self had come the forgetfulness of self;
and her profession, her life-work, of which she had been so proud, had
seemed to her of small concern. Now she was his, and his life was hers.
She should--so she told herself--be henceforward happy in his happiness,
and her only pride would be the pride in his achievements.

But now the unexpected had happened, and Bennett had given up his
career. During the period of Bennett's convalescence Lloyd had often
talked long and earnestly with him, and partly from what he had told her
and partly from much that she inferred she had at last been able to
trace out and follow the mental processes and changes through which
Bennett had passed. He, too, had been proved by fire; he, too, had had
his ordeal, his trial.

By nature, by tr