Inexperience was her chief weakness. Intuition, impulse and insight she possessed in high degree, but these alone would not suffice her, would not enable her to make her new position unassailable. It was certain, once the first rush of pleasurable emotion was over, that Maddison would begin to weigh the consequences of what he had done, that he would question whether stress of circumstances had not driven him to act foolishly in tying himself so closely to her. He would study her keenly to find out whether she was really charming or only appeared so to him. The woman desired is so often more desirable than the woman won. It must be her unremitting task never to disappoint him in any way, and in this the chief difficulty would be to know where to draw the line between the utter submission to his will which might lead to rapid satiation and the making it difficult for him to gain his every point without feeling that he was not being given all that he was paying for. She must make her hold upon him so tight that there would be no chance of his easily loosening it before she herself might desire to be free. She determined that no avoidable rashness or haste should endanger the future. Maddison acted as she expected. After the first outburst of passion he was strongly impelled to draw back, to survey critically the situation into which he had been drawn almost against his will, and certainly against his better judgment, and to ask himself repeatedly if there could be any continued content for him in this liaison. He settled Marian in a pretty flat not far from his studio, and the first test to which he put her was to watch carefully her taste in the decorating and furnishing of her new home. “I want everything to be just what you like,” she said to him, as they surveyed the bare, unpapered rooms. “It is so lovely to start with everything to do and not to have to put up with what other people have put up. Everything must be just what you like, George.” He laughed. “What _I_ like?—What _you_ like.” “Perhaps we shall both like the same things! Though it’s cheeky of me to imagine that my taste could be as good as yours. I don’t think I shall want anything you will consider dreadful, but you must teach me what are the best things. Only, do let everything be pretty and quiet—and not too many things. And don’t let’s go to one shop and get everything there; I’d much rather do it bit by bit. I want a home—our home—not a gimcrack shop or a ready-made bandbox as if I were a new hat—a real _home_.” She spoke the word almost sadly, and turning away from him, went across the room and looked out of the window at the canal, the noisy road, the vast vistas of houses and the dun-colored sky. Her tone touched him, as she had hoped it would; there rushed in on him a sudden realization that he had taken into his keeping a human soul, a lonely soul that had called to him for help.