When it became apparent that he was not to be appeased and that his threat had been genuine, Selma accepted the new relation without demur, and prepared to play her part in the compact as though she had been equally obdurate in her outcry for her freedom. She met reserve with reserve, maintaining rigorously the attitude that she had been wronged and that he was to blame. Meantime she watched him narrowly, wondering what his grave, sad demeanor and solicitous politeness signified. When presently it became plain to her that not merely she was to be free to follow her own bent, but that he was ready to provide her with the means to carry out her schemes, she regarded his liberality as weakness and a sign that he knew in his heart that she was in the right. Immediately, and with thinly concealed triumph, she planned to utilize the new liberty at her disposal, purging any scruples from her conscience by the generous reflection that when Wilbur's brow unbent and his lips moved freely she would forgive him and proffer him once more her conjugal counsel and sympathy. She was firmly of the opinion that, unless he thus acknowledged his shortcomings and promised improvement, the present arrangement was completely to her liking, and that confidence and happiness between them would be utterly impossible. She shed some tears over the thought that unkind circumstances had robbed her of the love by which she had set such store and which she, on her part, still cherished, but she comforted herself with the retort that its loss was preferable to sacrificing weakly the development of her own ideas and life to its perpetuation.