CHAPTER 6


No, Trina did not know. "Do I love him? Do I love him?" A thousand times
she put the question to herself during the next two or three days. At
night she hardly slept, but lay broad awake for hours in her little,
gayly painted bed, with its white netting, torturing herself with doubts
and questions. At times she remembered the scene in the station with a
veritable agony of shame, and at other times she was ashamed to recall
it with a thrill of joy. Nothing could have been more sudden, more
unexpected, than that surrender of herself. For over a year she had
thought that Marcus would some day be her husband. They would be
married, she supposed, some time in the future, she did not know exactly
when; the matter did not take definite shape in her mind. She liked
Cousin Mark very well. And then suddenly this cross-current had set
in; this blond giant had appeared, this huge, stolid fellow, with
his immense, crude strength. She had not loved him at first, that was
certain. The day he had spoken to her in his "Parlors" she had only been
terrified. If he had confined himself to merely speaking, as did Marcus,
to pleading with her, to wooing her at a distance, forestalling her
wishes, showing her little attentions, sending her boxes of candy, she
could have easily withstood him. But he had only to take her in his
arms, to crush down her struggle with his enormous strength, to subdue
her, conquer her by sheer brute force, and she gave up in an instant.

But why--why had she done so? Why did she feel the desire, the necessity
of being conquered by a superior strength? Why did it please her? Why
had it suddenly thrilled her from head to foot with a quick, terrifying