‘I have not achieved much to be proud of as yet,’ he said, shaking his head; and then there was again a pause, perhaps not quite so ecstatic a pause, for practical necessity and the urgent call for a decision of one kind or other began to be felt, and silenced them. It was easy to say that there was one thing that was _not_ to be done--but after? Then for the first time in her life Anne felt the disability of her womanhood. This tells for little so long as the relations between men and women are not in question. It is when these ties begin--and a girl, who has perhaps taken the initiative all her life, finds herself suddenly reduced to silence in face of her lover--that the bond is felt. What could she say or suggest? She had exhausted her powers when she declared with such proud emphasis that to give up was impossible. Then nature, which is above all law, stepped in and silenced her. What could she do further? It was for him to speak. The first sense of this compulsion was both sweet and painful to her--painful, because her mind was overflowing with active energy and purpose which longed for utterance: sweet, as the sign and symbol of a new condition, a union more rich and strange than any individuality. Anne had hesitated little in her life, and had not known what it was to wait. Now she bent her head to the necessity in a curious maze of feeling--bewildered, happy, a little impatient, wondering and hoping, silent as she had never in all her life before been tempted to be.