It was with a blushing conscience that she now remembered how for some weeks she had been thinking that if the only obstacle that prevented her living her life as she felt that her life should be lived, was what would generally be regarded as a moral one, she would not hesitate for a moment to kick that obstacle out of her way, and live her life in accordance with the dictates of the heart of a woman:--a true woman, quivering with those true instincts which make up the life of a real woman. That had actually been the substance of her thoughts for several weeks past. She shuddered at the recollection now. She thanked God that she could look at such matters very differently now; and this meant that she thanked God for having removed temptation from her. The young widow bathed her face and smoothed her hair and looked at herself in the glass, and was quite satisfied with the reflection. She had emerged from an ordeal by fire, and she found that not a hair of her head was singed. The three young men who had passed through the seven times heated furnace must have felt pretty well satisfied with themselves when they found that they had not suffered. Only a few hours earlier this young woman had had her gloomy moments. She was an intelligent girl, and so was perfectly well aware of the fact that a girl’s supreme chance in life comes to her by marriage, and she had thrown this chance away, and it might never return to her. It was the force of this reflection that had caused her to begin experimenting with her maimed life, with a view of making the most of it. The trick which she had played upon the bumptious tenor represented only one of her experiments. All the people around her, men as well as women, had been unable to stem the current of his insolence. They were all ready to lie down before him and allow him to achieve the triumph of the hero of a bas-relief, at their expense: they had permitted him to put his feet on their necks, as it were. She had wondered if it would not be possible for her to trip up this blatant alabaster hero when he was stalking about from neck to neck of better people than himself. Her experiment had succeeded, and she had gone home with a feeling that if she had been made a fool of by a man, she had shown herself capable of making a man look very like a fool even in his own eyes. This was some encouragement to her; and she had thus been led to wonder if it might not be possible for her to employ her intelligence and her looks to such good purpose as should at least minimize her folly in throwing away her best chance of making a great thing out of her life. She knew that this question demanded some earnest thinking out, considering her position, but she had already attacked it, when lo! in a single moment all the conditions of the contest--it would be a contest, she knew--had changed.