The Hamlen she met at Bermuda was not the unreasonable boy of twenty years before. He was still bitter, but they met on terms which gave her the ascendency. Those traits which she had admired were accentuated, and the fierce intensity had become modified. Now it was her mind which controlled and his which yielded. He had tried to hold out against her in refusing to come to America, but he had yielded; he was now trying to hold out against her judgment that his marriage to Merry would restore the lost equilibrium, but again he would yield. Still, above all other considerations, the great fact stood out in Marian's mind that the match itself was ideal. Merry would find in him an intellectual force which would satisfy her natural predilections; she would give him in her spontaneity a leaven to perpetuate the normal expressions of life which Huntington had taught him to understand. She would give him the youth which he had lost, he would give her the response which her unusual development could never obtain from a younger man. The balance was perfect. The mother's heart rejoiced that her efforts could make so noble a gift to her daughter, while the woman's heart found equal satisfaction that these same efforts could pay the debt of years in ample measure. It would have been a relief if her plans for entertaining the Bermuda party could have been carried through without including Huntington, but, entirely aside from the fact that this omission would have been a marked slight, his co-operation in bringing Hamlen to this satisfactory condition had been so conspicuous that there was no alternative. Mrs. Thatcher was apprehensive lest he take advantage of his influence with Hamlen to strengthen his will against her judgment; but this was a chance she had to take. Could she have read his mind Marian would have found nothing to fear from Huntington. His familiarity with Merry's nature made him aware, soon after his arrival, of the fact that something of unusual moment had occurred. There was a hectic excitement in her welcome, a yearning in her eyes, otherwise unexplained, which went straight to his heart and prepared him for the climax in the great renunciation of his life. "When the supreme test comes," she had told him, "I shall accept it"; and he was convinced that the test had come and been accepted. "Ah, well!" he sighed deeply, "who am I to interfere?" It was the second day after his arrival before they finally found themselves alone together, and he realized that Merry had been awaiting this opportunity to have with him one of those intimate conversations which previously he had so much enjoyed. Now, knowing what was coming, he dreaded it. Until the words were spoken he could at least deceive himself into believing that he might be wrong, and this self-deception was all he now had left. "Let us sit down here in the sand," she said to him, "just as we used to at Elba Beach."