"And then we were married. You remember how sudden it was, and how wonderful; but not wonderful in the way it might have been. I kept guard over myself. I wouldn't wear becoming dresses; I wouldn't even let him dream what I really was like--wouldn't let him see me with my hair down because I knew it was beautiful. I combed it plainly and dressed like a nurse or a nun, and every day I went to the laboratory with him and kept him at his work. He had got hold of this dazzling idea of the extraneous development of life, and he set himself to prove it. I worked early and late to help him. I let him go out and meet people and reap honors, and I stayed and did the drudgery. But don't imagine I was a martyr. I liked it. I belonged to him. It was my honor and delight to work for him. I wanted him to have all of the credit. The more important the result, the more satisfaction I should have in proclaiming him the victor. I was really at the old business of woman, subordinating myself to a man I loved. But I was doing it in a new way, do you see? I was setting aside the privilege of my womanhood for him, refraining from making any merely feminine appeal. You remember hearing Dr. von Shierbrand say there was but one way woman should serve man--the way in which Marguerite served Faust? It made me laugh. I knew a harder road than that to walk--a road of more complete abnegation." "But the babies came." "Yes, the babies came. I was afraid even to let him be as happy in them as he wanted to be. I held him away. I wouldn't let him dwell on the thought of me as the mother of those darlings. I dared not even be as happy myself as I wished, but I had secret joys that I told him nothing about, because I was saving him for himself and his work. But at what a cost, Kate!" "Honora, it was sacrilegious!" Honora leaped to her feet again. "Yes, yes," she cried, "it was. And now all has happened according to prophecy, and he's gone with this woman! He thinks she's his mate, but, I--I was his mate. And I defrauded him. So now he's taken her because she was kind, because she loved him, because--she was beautiful!" "She looks like you." "Don't I know it? It's my beauty that he's gone away with--the beauty I wouldn't let him see. Of course, he doesn't realize it. He only knows life cheated him, and now he's trying to make up to himself for what he's lost." "Oh, can you excuse him like that?" The daylight was hardening, and it threw Honora's drawn face into repellent relief. "I don't excuse him at all!" she said. "I condemn him! I condemn him! With all his intellect, to be such a fool! And to be so cruel--so hideously cruel!" But she checked herself sharply. She looked around her with eyes that seemed to take in things visible and invisible--all that had been enacted in that curious room, all the paraphernalia, all the significance of those uncompleted, important experiments. Then suddenly her face paled and yet burned with light.