Two rules she had laid down for herself; never to lose control over her emotions and always to remember that the most powerful woman is she who seems most weak. She understood clearly that her chief handicap was lack of experience, but she believed that in a woman instinct takes the place of knowledge. She would feel her way carefully, step by step, watching and probing, but the first step and the most difficult was to free herself and to obtain a footing in the greater world. She had almost despaired of ever doing this, when so unexpectedly she had met with Maddison. She had watched his career with interest and with admiration of its brilliant and rapid success, and now she upbraided herself because it had never entered into her calculations that she might be able to utilize him in the attaining of her ambitions. She ought to have remembered how near to loving her he had once been. So far, in her dealings with him, she did not think that she had made any error. She had shown no interest in him, which she believed was the best way to pique him into feeling interest in her. She had talked of herself, had told him enough to enable him to see clearly how dissatisfied she was with her present lot. She now felt that all that remained for her to do was to persuade him that she was worth winning, not merely for her beauty, but because she could add to the attractiveness and pleasure of his life. She, however, did not know anything of his way of life, and did not even know whether any other woman held the place she wished to obtain for herself. He had vaguely said that he was willing to help her; he had shown anxiety by at once calling when she had failed to go to him; but, since then, silence. The next move was left to her, and with all her care she might make a false one. She knew that he was emotional, and conjectured that, once roused, no scruple of conventional morality would be a hindrance to him in achieving his desire. If she were to approach him again now, without any reasonable excuse for doing so, she feared that she might fail to gain his help, and such a failure would mean lasting defeat. There was no means that she could think of by which she could bring him to her. To wait indefinitely was not only dangerous but repugnant to her daily intensifying longing for escape from her present life. So far, she had considered only two of the three factors in the case—herself and Maddison. It remained to be proved whether or not she could work her will by the instrumentality of her husband. She knew his intense devotion to her, but that, great as it was, it weighed nothing against his sense of right and wrong. She did not hold the first place in his life: that was given to his work. Love, health, comfort, success—all were nothing in the scales against duty. Further, even if he were willing to give up all for her, he could neither help her ambitions nor satisfy her longings, the chief of which, indeed, was to be free from him.