She drew herself up with a horror of realization.  The thing that so long ago she had thought she could not endure was at last upon her!  Her teeth began to chatter again, and her hands, which had been clasped, to twist themselves with the writhing motion of the mentally distraught.

“Go on!” commanded Kate.  “What happened next?”

“I let him love me!”

“I thought you said he hadn’t noticed you.”

“He hadn’t; and I didn’t talk with him more than usual or coquette with him.  But I let down the barriers in my mind.  I never had been ashamed of loving him, but now I willed my love to stream out toward him like—­like banners of light.  If I had called him aloud, he couldn’t have answered more quickly.  He turned toward me, and I saw all his being set my way.  Oh, it was like a transfiguration!  Then, as soon as ever I saw that, I began holding him steady.  I let him feel that we were to keep on working side by side, quietly using and increasing our knowledge.  I made him scourge his love back; I made him keep his mind uppermost; I saved him from himself.”

“Oh, Honora!  And then you were married?”

“And then we were married.  You remember how sudden it was, and how wonderful; but not wonderful in the way it might have been.  I kept guard over myself.  I wouldn’t wear becoming dresses; I wouldn’t even let him dream what I really was like—­wouldn’t let him see me with my hair down because I knew it was beautiful.  I combed it plainly and dressed like a nurse or a nun, and every day I went to the laboratory with him and kept him at his work.  He had got hold of this dazzling idea of the extraneous development of life, and he set himself to prove it.  I worked early and late to help him.  I let him go out and meet people and reap honors, and I stayed and did the drudgery.  But don’t imagine I was a martyr.  I liked it.  I belonged to him.  It was my honor and delight to work for him.  I wanted him to have all of the credit.  The more important the result, the more satisfaction I should have in proclaiming him the victor.  I was really at the old business of woman, subordinating myself to a man I loved.  But I was doing it in a new way, do you see?  I was setting aside the privilege of my womanhood for him, refraining from making any merely feminine appeal.  You remember hearing Dr. von Shierbrand say there was but one way woman should serve man—­the way in which Marguerite served Faust?  It made me laugh.  I knew a harder road than that to walk—­a road of more complete abnegation.”

“But the babies came.”

“Yes, the babies came.  I was afraid even to let him be as happy in them as he wanted to be.  I held him away.  I wouldn’t let him dwell on the thought of me as the mother of those darlings.  I dared not even be as happy myself as I wished, but I had secret joys that I told him nothing about, because I was saving him for himself and his work.  But at what a cost, Kate!”