was the cause, she chose to think, of the excessive
circumspection she must henceforth practise; precariously footing, embracing
hardest earth, the plainest rules, to get back to safety. Not that she was
personally endangered, or at least not spiritually; she could always fly in soul
to her heights. But she had now to be on guard, constantly in the fencing
attitude. And watchful of herself as well. That was admitted with a ready
frankness, to save it from being a necessitated and painful confession: for the
voluntary acquiescence, if it involved her in her sex, claimed an individual
exemption. »Women are women, and I am a woman: but I am I, and unlike them: I
see we are weak, and weakness tempts: in owning the prudence of guarded steps, I
am armed. It is by dissembling, feigning immunity, that we are imperilled.« She
would have phrased it so, with some anger at her feminine nature as well as at
the subjection forced on her by circumstances.
    Besides, her position and Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into
remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge; and the
world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him down for an
offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of folly must be bravely
taken, if taken at all. Disguise degraded her to the reptiles.
    This was faced. Consequently there was no fear of it.
    She had very easily proved that she had skill and self-possession to keep
him rational, and therefore they could continue to meet. A little outburst of
frenzy to a reputably handsome woman could be treated as the froth of a passing
wave. Men have the trick, infants their fevers.
    Diana's days were spent in reasoning. Her nights were not so tuneable to the
superior mind. When asleep she was the sport of elves that danced her into
tangles too deliciously unravelled, and left new problems for the wise-eyed and
anxious morning. She solved them with the thought that in sleep it was the mere
ordinary woman who fell a prey to her tormentors; awake, she dispersed the
swarm, her sky was clear. Gradually the persecution ceased, thanks to her active
pen.
    A letter from her legal adviser, old Mr. Braddock, informed her that no
grounds existed for apprehending marital annoyance, and late in May her
household had resumed its customary round.
    She examined her accounts. The Debit and Credit sides presented much of the
appearance of male and female in our jog-trot