Fargus, as all those who are forced to surrender without conditions, retained a reservation,—he counted on the future. His nature was too simple and intense to fathom the complexities of marriage. He had the fierce, half-savage conception that the woman resigned her ascendancy when she gave herself into his power. He conceived of woman as a tyrant before marriage and a suppliant ever after. For him the physical submission carried all with it. So even in his surrender he believed that time would restore the balance in his favor.

Sheila, on the contrary, had well understood that the first weeks of marriage must be a battle on which would hinge the fortunes of her whole life. She had this advantage, that Fargus was utterly unprepared and ignorant of the thousand agilities of her sex. She had subdued him by taking him by surprise, but she was not the dupe of her victory. She knew where the danger lay, divining the secret thoughts of her husband. The problem with her was to forever cheat his infatuation. She submitted but she did not give herself to him.

The history of these unending skirmishes, open or ambushed, seldom rising to the dignity of a conflict, was an uninterrupted record of successes for the woman. Fargus, who had counted on the future, found himself each day more willingly subjugated. This infatuation that overturned all his ideas of conduct gave to his love the mad aspect of a forbidden passion. Each time that he ceded to Sheila he had a moment of horror, and then that delirious access of folly and passion which comes only to the man who loves and ruins himself.

Sheila, then, had her way, but she did not abuse her power. She even began to practise economies,—she sewed the curtains with her own needle and marked the linen. Fargus avowed himself touched by such acts of moderation. Nevertheless, there were moments in the night when he awoke with a cry, starting in a cold perspiration from a nightmare where he had seen himself dragged down into bankruptcy by the follies of his pretty wife. He rose and crept over the house, trying the windows and the locks, listening suspiciously at the door of the servant, an innovation to which he could never accustom himself. Then returning softly to his room he regained his bed. But the night was rare when the creak of a plank did not start him again on his uncanny rounds.

He was not happy. He had believed that in marriage all desires were gratified. Instead he found himself, to his mystification, even more miserable than in the days when he returned in despair to his one room in the slums, there to pursue all night, in his dreams, the elusive figure of the radiant woman. He came at length, slowly, to understand what she adroitly and cruelly intended he should, that the possession at last of Sheila, even under the wide domain of marriage, left him still defeated, and that it was her love alone that would satisfy. After that he was ready for all follies.

When Sheila saw that the victory was complete, she had, naturally, a moment of intense virtue, in which she said to herself that she could well be content, with a man whom she so easily bent to her every desire. Besides, the joy of making a home was to her such a natural impulse, that during its ecstasy Fargus represented to her no more than the husband. This joy was so intense that she came near relenting and showing him some kindness,—a slip against which she was forced to be constantly on her guard. For she saw clearly that her domination lay in perpetual vigilance, and that with such a man nothing could be shared—she would have to be either a tyrant or a slave.

There was on her fair horizon but the ugly shadow of the lawyer. She had almost forgotten him, then she almost doubted his existence, so fantastic seemed the idea of their extraordinary contract. Each month, she had agreed to give him an accounting, delivering him her note for the sum due. But to carry out such a program they must see each other, and she asked herself incredulously how the lawyer could manage.

The month passed without a sign of Bofinger, when, one evening as she was in her bedroom, she heard, to her amazement, the familiar shuffle of Fargus on the stoop, accompanied by a thick, resolute fall of feet. The lock clicked and the voice of Bofinger said loudly:

"See here, Mr. Fargus, your lady won't like being taken by surprise."

She understood that he was sending her a warning. She had indeed need of it. A voice from the dead could not have struck more terror than this sudden apparition of the lawyer. She felt her knees wabble and with an effort seized a bottle of smelling salts. Her repulsion for Bofinger, intensified by fear, was suddenly a hundred times magnified by this uncanny introduction into her home, on the very arm of her husband, at the moment when she fatuously had put him out of her mind.

"Ah, I was so happy!" she cried, sinking limply into a chair.

Nevertheless she realized that the moment was fraught with peril and that she must regain her control.

"Sheila, Sheila!" Fargus called from below.

She shut her teeth savagely over her lip and went down to face her husband's glance.

"Sheila," he said, as she halted in simulated surprise, "I brought an old friend with me,—Mr. Bofinger."

She went hurriedly past her husband, murmuring something, and extended her hand to the lawyer, who, bland and smiling, bowed with stiff legs. Seeing his self-possession, she rallied, brought to calm by the quiet command of his eye.

"Take Mr. Bofinger into the parlor, my dear," Fargus said. "Put him into a comfortable chair and make him at home. I'll be down in a minute."

"Really, Mrs. Fargus," Bofinger said, halting on the threshold of the parlor, "I compliment you on your home. I heard my friend had to sail pretty close this winter, but I guess that must have been rumor. Really, this is elegant; say, this is luxury!"

While pronouncing this glibly he managed to lay his fingers over his lips, sending her a glance of warning. Sheila, at this extraordinary introduction, delivered without a trace of expression to clarify its meaning, stood in stupid bewilderment. When she heard the sound of her husband's step above, she started forward with an impulsive question. With a rapid frown the lawyer again laid his finger along his lips and, drawing her to a corner, said quickly:

"Not a word to-night. Complain at the table about the size of the house—remember!" Then aloud, quelling her astonishment with a peremptory gesture, he continued, raising his voice purposely, "Mrs. Fargus, I really ought to apologize. I shouldn't have dropped in on you like this, but your husband would have it; and when an old friend gets you buttonholed—you know!"

This assumption of intimacy, avowed alike by the lawyer and her husband, completed her terror. Her wits had deserted her. All her artillery lay in the consciousness of her fascination. As soon as she knew herself loved, she became formidable and arrogant. The unimpressionable glance of the lawyer disarmed her and scattered all her artifices. Obeying an imperious sign from Bofinger, she gathered herself together and said hastily:

"Why—I am sure my husband was quite right, and, indeed, it's no trouble."

"So I said," Fargus put in, his nocturnal face appearing at the door when she believed him above. "Sheila, it's all right, I had something sent over from the restaurant."

"Then I'll see to it," she said, escaping quickly, for she felt as yet unequal to retaining her composure before both of them.

The supper, to her relief, passed easily. She dissociated herself from the conversation, resisting all the lawyer's attempts to drag her into it and evading obstinately a dozen openings which he gave her to criticise her home. Keeping a stubborn silence, then, she began anxiously to study his game. Seeing that she had no intention of obeying him, he shifted his tactics. He began a tirade against the extravagance of the modern woman, asserting that she put on her back one fourth of the family income. Sheila smiled, but guarded herself against a retort. Fargus applauded in his taciturn way.

Receiving no answer, Bofinger developed his thesis, to the point of declaring that the nation was becoming effeminate, due to the fact that the wife instead of the husband was the dominating influence in the home. He even ascribed to this cause the increase of domestic infelicity.

"Is he, by any chance, trying to force me to quarrel with him?" Sheila thought in amused perplexity. "Is that his game, I wonder?"

Acting on this assumption, she avoided all expression so skilfully that the lawyer on his leaving immediately after supper shot her a glance full of anger and irritation.

"Come again—come soon," Fargus said cordially. "Sheila, ask Mr. Bofinger to run in and see you some afternoon."

"Why," she stammered, overcome by this new surprise, "I hope he will."

When Fargus returned from ushering out the lawyer, he found Sheila in the parlor, an elbow on the mantelpiece, resting her chin pensively in her palm.

"I thought you had no friends," she said immediately.

"I? So I haven't—not many."

"Mr. Bofinger is a friend then?"

"He is—why, yes."

"You have known him a long time then?"

"Oh, quite a while."

"Five years?"

"Well—around that."

"Why, you've never spoken to me of him."

"Didn't I? So I didn't."

"Tell me this," she said, her anxiety rising above her prudence, "do you rely upon him? Do you trust him?"

"Why, in a way," he answered evasively, adding sharply, "why do you ask that?"

She made a gesture of impatience.

"You don't like him, eh?"

Her shoulders twisted with an indefinable displeasure.

"Why not?"

"I could never trust—that man!" she said desperately. "It's a woman's instinct, that's all."

"Nonsense," he answered with great good humor, "Bofinger's square as they make 'em. He is not a lady's man, I know. But he's got sense—horse sense, and Sheila, my dear, if you ever want advice, go to him."

She opened her eyes very wide at this and said nothing more, turning it over and seeking some explanation in the tangle of the evening.

"I've been a fool," she thought, glancing at the satisfied face of Fargus. "I've played into Bofinger's hands—whereas I ought to have made Fargus jealous."

The truth is, she was too near the dreaded shadow of Bofinger to have regained the clearness of analysis which would have saved her from such a blunder.