Helena sat down to wait for Peter, who would be sure to find her wherever
she hid herself. This spot was dear to her, as those places where life
has consciously grown to a nobler stature are dear to men and women. It
was here that within twenty-four hours of her last words with Philip
Buntingford, she had sat wrestling with something which threatened vital
forces in her that her will consciously, desperately, set itself to
maintain. Through her whole ripened being, the passion of that inner
debate was still echoing; though she knew that the fight was really won.
It had run something like this:
"Why am I suffering like this?
"Because I am relaxed--unstrung. Why should I have everything I
want--when others go bare? Philip went bare for years. He endured--and
suffered. Why not I?
"But it is worse for me--who am young! I have a right to give way to what
I feel--to feel it to the utmost.
"That was the doctrine for women before the war--the old-fashioned women.
The modern woman is stronger. She is not merely nerves and feeling. She
must _never_ let feeling--pain--destroy her will! Everything depends upon
her will.
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