Clodagh's acceptance of this fiat had been curiously interesting--as had been her whole attitude towards Milbanke and his wishes. From the day on which she recognised that the state of matrimony was something irrevocably serious, she had taken upon herself an attitude of reserved surrender that was difficult to analyse--difficult even to superficially understand. By a strangely immature process of deduction, she had satisfied herself that marriage was a state of bondage, more or less distasteful as chance decreed--a state in which, by a fundamental law of nature, submission and self-repression were the chief factors necessary upon the woman's side. As sometimes happens when there is a great disparity in years, the wedded state had widened instead of lessening the gulf between Milbanke and herself. It had cast a sudden, awkward restraint upon the affection and respect that his actions had kindled in her mind, while inspiring no new or ardent feelings to take its place. Ridiculously--and yet naturally--her husband had become an infinitely more distant and unapproachable being than her father's friend had been. And to this new key she had, perforce, attuned her existence. With a greater number of years--even with a little more worldly experience--she might have made a vastly different business of her life; for, at the time of his marriage, Milbanke had been hovering upon the borderland of that fatuous love in which an old man can lose himself so completely. If, in those first months, she had permitted any of the ardour, any of the fascination of her nature to shine upon him, she might have led him by a silken thread in whatever direction she pleased. But three factors had precluded this--her youth, her inexperience, her entire ignorance of artifice. In her primary encounter with the realities of life, she had lost her strongest weapon--her frank, unswerving fearlessness; and in lieu of this she had, in the moment of first panic, seized upon the nearest substitute, and had wrapped herself in an armour of reserve.