But those were times of weakness.  Let anything be doubted rather than the good guidance of the man who was her breath of life!  Whither he led, let her go, not only submissively, exultingly.

Thus she thought, under pressure of the knowledge, that unless rushing into conflicts bigger than conceivable, she had to do it, and should therefore think it.

This was the prudent woman’s clear deduction from the state wherein she found herself, created by the one first great step of the mad woman.  Her surrender then might be likened to the detachment of a flower on the river’s bank by swell of flood:  she had no longer root of her own; away she sailed, through beautiful scenery, with occasionally a crashing fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the sunny whirling surface.  Strange to think, she had not since then power to grasp in her abstract mind a notion of stedfastness without or within.

But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman.  Love is a madness, having heaven’s wisdom in it—­a spark.  But even when it is driving us on the breakers, call it love:  and be not unworthy of it, hold to it.  She and Victor had drunk of a cup.  The philtre was in her veins, whatever the directions of the rational mind.

Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the car with a racing charioteer.  Or up beside a more than Titanically audacious balloonist.  For the charioteer is bent on a goal; and Victor’s course was an ascension from heights to heights.  He had ideas, he mastered Fortune.  He conquered Nataly and held her subject, in being above his ambition; which was now but an occupation for his powers, while the aim of his life was at the giving and taking of simple enjoyment.  In spite of his fits of unreasonableness in the means—­and the woman loving him could trace them to a breath of nature—­his gentle good friendly innocent aim in life was of this very simplest; so wonderful, by contrast with his powers, that she, assured of it as she was by experience of him, was touched, in a transfusion of her feelings through lucent globes of admiration and of tenderness, to reverence.  There had been occasions when her wish for the whole world to have proof and exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and simplicity amid his gifts, prompted her incitement of him to stand forth eminently:  (’lead a kingdom,’ was the phrase behind the curtain within her shy bosom;) and it revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being still the Nataly who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.

And why not?  Was that regretted?  Far from it.  In her maturity, the woman was unable to send forth any dwelling thought or more than a flight of twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith seemed to expunge near upon the half—­of her term of years.  If it came to consideration of her family and the family’s opinion of her conduct, her judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam to a giddiness and subsided.