obvious to hindsight?  Only by 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 impressed him.  Bitter against him and dreading the open humiliation she would have to endure before she could make one so self-absorbed see what she was about, she put out her light early, with intent to rise when he did and be at breakfast before he could finish.  She lay awake until nearly dawn, then fell into a deep sleep.  When she woke it was noon; she felt so greatly refreshed that her high good humor would not suffer her to be deeply resentful against him for this second failure.  “No matter,” reflected she.  “He might have suspected me if I’d done anything so revolutionary as appear at breakfast.  I’ll make my beginning at lunch.”

She was now striving, with some success, to think of him as a tyrant whom she, luckless martyr, must cajole.  “I’m going the way of all the married women,” thought she.  “They soon find there’s no honorable way to get their rights from their masters, find they simply have to degrade themselves.”  Yes, he was forcing her to degrade herself, to simulate affection when the reverse was in her heart.  Well, she would make him pay dearly for it—­some day.  Meanwhile she must gain her point.  “If I don’t, I’d better not have married.  To be Mrs. is something, but not much if I’m the creature of his whims.”