experiment and failure is the art of success learned. Her original
plan had been the best possible, taking into account her lack of
knowledge of male nature and the very misleading indications of
his real character she had got from him. In her position would not
almost any one have decided that the right way to move him was by
holding him at respectful distance and by indirect talk, with the
inevitable drift of events doing the principal work--gradually
awakening him to the responsibilities and privileges which his
entry into a higher social station implied?

But no time must now be lost; the new way, which experience had
revealed, must be taken forthwith and traveled by forced marches.
Before they left the woods she must have led him through all the
gradations of domestic climate between their present frosty if
kindly winter, and summer, or, at least, a very balmy spring. From
what she knew of his temperament she guessed that once she began
to thaw he would forthwith whirl her into July. She must be
prepared to accept that, however--repellent though the thought
was--she assured herself it was most repellent. She prided herself
on her skill at catching and checking herself in self-deception;
but it somehow did not occur to her to contrast her rather
listless previous planning with the energy and interest she at
once put into this project for supreme martyrdom, as she regarded
it.

When he came back that evening she was ready. But not he; he
stalked in, sulking and blustering, tired, ignoring her, doing all
the talking himself, and departing for bed as soon as dinner was
over. She felt as if he had repulsed her, though, in fact, her
overtures were wholly internal and could not, by any chance, have