Linda remembered agonized evenings when, in a return of his brutal
manner of the unforgettable night in the Lowrie garden, he tried to
force a recognition of his passion. It had left her cold, exhausted,
the victim of a mingled disappointment at her failure to respond
with a hatred of all essential existence. At last, on a particularly
trying occasion, she had desperately agreed to marry him.

The aversion of her mother, becoming really dangerous, had finally
appalled her; and a headache weighed on her with a leaden pain.
Dodge, too, had been unusually considerate; he talked about the
future--tied up, he asserted, in her--of his work; and suddenly, at
the signal of her rare tears, Linda agreed to a wedding.

In the middle of the night she had wakened oppressed by a dread
resulting in an uncontrollable chill. She thought first that her
mother was bending a malignant face over her; and then realized that
her feeling was caused by her promise to Dodge Pleydon. It had grown
worse instead of vanishing, waves of nameless shrinking swept over
her; and in the morning, further harrowed by the actualities of
being, she had sent a telegram to Arnaud Hallet--to Arnaud's
kindness and affection, his detachment not unlike her own.

They were married immediately; and through the ceremony and the
succeeding days she had been almost entirely absorbed in a sensation
of escape. At the death of Amelia Lowrie, soon after, Arnaud had
suggested a temporary period in the house she remembered with
pleasure; and, making small alterations with the months and years,
they had tacitly agreed to remain.

Linda often wondered, walking about the lower floor, why it seemed