been cruel to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; and had been so, perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to be free. But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble herself still farther than he had humbled her—she was ready to do anything, if only she might see him once again.
She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? But what could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with his liberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more than ever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, not for any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him in that way. Yes—but to see him again, only once!
Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlyn and his wife. "Why should two people who've just done each other the best turn they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?" If in offering Nick his freedom she had indeed done him such a service as that, perhaps he no longer hated her, would no longer be unwilling to see her. . . . At any rate, why should she not write to him on that assumption, write in a spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting that they should meet and "settle things"? The business-like word "settle" (how she hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designs upon his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern, too free from what Strefford
