But she knew very well that only marriage could give her her chance. Mr. Harter (I am sure that she spoke of him as “Mr. Harter” throughout) was the uncle of one of her school friends. Diamond Ellison went to stay with this girl at her home in one of the London suburbs, and the solicitor--twenty years her senior--came to the house and fell under one of the brief, incomprehensible spells that young women of a certain type sometimes exercise over men no longer in their first youth. He misjudged her from first to last, probably misled by the boldness of her mere physical outlines and the mixture of contempt and familiarity in her manner towards men. His first proposals were received by her with no sense of shock--she was both too experienced in men and too ruthlessly cynical for that--but with utter disdain. “You can ask me to marry you--or you can clear out,” said Diamond Ellison. He married her. In the East, she had all the success that she had expected and intended to have. The women never liked her, but she knew herself to be essentially a man’s woman, and she was indifferent then and always to the opinions of her surroundings. The men fell in love with her, and Harter was furiously jealous. On her own showing, Harter had everything to complain of in his wife. She did not pretend to care for him, she flirted with other men, she was notorious, even judged by the lax standards of the East, and she replied to his incessant, nagging remonstrances with sulky, curt indifference. The only thing that he could never charge her with was extravagance, for she was far too practical a woman to squander money, and perhaps also too proud, since she had not a penny of her own. (Mrs. Ellison was dead, and she had long ago quarreled with old Ellison, who gave her nothing at all.) Harter threatened to send her home, and she replied that she would not go. Nor did she. A far stronger man than Harter would have found it impossible to get the better of her. A combination of recklessness and absolute determination made her very nearly impervious. She even took her pleasures sulkily and without enthusiasm, although she never missed an entertainment or an expedition. They had no child, of course. Harter got her back to England at last, after nearly five years of it, by pretending to book his passage as well, and then backing out of it at the last minute. She despised him all the more for the subterfuge. She herself was never anything but absolutely direct. She told Patch that she would not have come home even then, but that she was ill, and it is very certain that only a woman of iron physique and resolute will could have stood the climate, and the racket of her days and nights, for that length of time.