In her room with the dark all around her, Wilmer allowed herself to relax somewhat. But vigilance is the eternal price of liberty in more senses than one. The moment she permitted her thoughts to wander where they would, they went where she would not. Only once before had she felt herself the victim of this unseen power, and the man who was responsible now lay dead at Château-Thierry. She had been younger then. Over twenty, every year counts double in a woman’s life until she reaches full maturity. Her youth had been an excuse where now it no longer was. And yet she doubted if at twenty she would have had to fight so hard for control. Her emotions were feebler then. To add to her confusion she was not at all sure what it was she was trying to repulse. There is so much vagueness in a young woman’s life; so much hinted at, but never made clear; so much guessed, but not known. It is probably true that they are more of a mystery to themselves than to the young men who look upon them with such awe. It was certainly true of Wilmer in spite of all her reading. No two authorities seemed to her able to agree on this thing called love; whether it was something to welcome or something to be guarded against. Before Allston came along she had been inclining to the latter view, for it appeared to lead more often to unhappiness than to happiness. Most tragedies were born of love; the great tragedies as well as the sordid little ones. In most cases woman was the victim, and when not, most certainly deserved to be. The good women suffered to themselves; the bad women caused others to suffer. If this were true, then love was something to be fought off like an evil spirit. But the trouble was that instead of gaining strength as she struggled, as in other contests of her life, she felt her resistance to be constantly weakening. The more she argued, the feebler became her arguments; the more bitterly she condemned herself, the more ardently she desired. Hour by hour her intellect had been giving way to her emotions. She was becoming, looking at it in one way, less and less intelligent in her attitude to this burning problem. And yet if her slow retreat did not bring her back into safer territory, it left her on more familiar ground. Forced to her base, she found that base to be her heart. And her heart was more peculiarly herself than her mind. There are, in every woman, two women; the one coolly, calmly, deliberately, intelligently formed, and within her another, often enough imprisoned for life, the creation of God. Shyly the latter sits in silence peeping as she finds her opportunity through the eyes--safe hidden in the eyes--or makes her presence felt through a touch of the hand or, in full power, through the lips. And this woman grows and grows if given half a chance. If not she sickens and dies--pathetically, tragically. And what is left after that may be admirable, but does not win admiration.