Stuart wanted her again; terribly wanted her, more than ever wanted her. He loved and so could be hurt. He needed love and so could be given pain. He thought she would give in; she knew that she would not. There was power in that knowledge. And so she watched him suffer and herself gained new poise. She did not consider how it was a sorry thing to fill her life with. When, that night that was like being struck by lightning, she came to know that the man to whom she had given--_she_--had turned from her to another woman it was as if she was then and there sealed in. She would never let herself leave again. Outraged pride blocked every path out from self. She was shut in with her power to inflict pain. That was all she had. And then that boy came and made her look at herself and know that she was poor! That was why Stella Cutting could be talking of how Marion Averley had "broken." They were talking about it, of course; about her and Ruth Holland and her husband. _Her_ husband, she thought insistently, but without getting the accustomed satisfaction from the thought. Miserably she wondered just what they were saying; she flinched in the thought of their talk about her hurt, her loneliness. And then she felt a little as if she could cry. She had wondered if she had anybody's real pity. That thought of their talking of it opened it to her, drew her to it. She thought of Ruth Holland, gave up the worn pretense of disinterest and let herself go in thinking of her. The first feeling she had had when she suspected that her husband was drawn to that girl, Ruth Holland, was one of chagrin, a further hurt to pride. For her power to give pain would be cut off. Once she saw the girl's face light as Stuart went up to her for a dance. She knew then that the man who had that girl's love could not be hurt in the way she had been hurting. At first she was not so much jealous as strangely desolated. And then as time went on and in those little ways that can make things known to those made acute through unhappiness she came to know that her husband cared for this girl and had her love, anger at having been again stripped, again left there outraged, made her seize upon the only power left, that more sordid, more commonplace kind of power. She could no longer hurt by withholding herself; she could only hurt by standing in the way. Rage at the humiliation of being reduced to that fastened her to it with a hold not to be let go. All else was taken from her and she was left with just that. Somehow she reduced herself to it; she became of the quality of it.