Yet now she put up a struggle for him and it lasted longer than might have been expected. Indeed, it endured for twenty-four hours, until the morning following upon a sleepless night. Then her chivalry and general vague sense of her obligations went down before what she believed, perhaps rightly, was her common sense. She began to see, with a dazzle of conviction, that Kellock was not at all the husband for her; but her woman’s wit put it differently: she assured her soul that she was not the wife for Kellock. This step once taken, those that followed were exceedingly swift, and they appeared first in a conversation, not with the man she desired to meet, but with another. For the present she concealed her new impressions from her family, but on the following Sunday, Mr. Knox came to tea, and was pleasant and agreeable, according to his custom. Tom and Mary Dolbear, gratified to observe the large philosophy with which he had taken his defeat, welcomed him and forgot the hard things they had said and thought about him.
Then, as the hour came for the visitor to return home, Medora made an excuse to accompany him. She was going into Dene to see Daisy Finch and have supper with her and her mother—so she said; and together they went their way.
She wasted no time with Mr. Knox, and having told him what she hungered to tell, changed her mind about Daisy Finch, and went home again. Upon the whole, Mr. Knox disappointed her at this meeting, yet looking back over their conversation, she felt not sorry it had taken place, though her face burned a little when she considered the full weight of some of the vatman’s remarks. He did not spare her; but she began to get accustomed to hard words now, and her sagacity told Medora that where there was blame, there was hope. To be past censure is to be past forgiveness.
She began at once to Mr. Knox upon the subject of her husband, and her second sentence indicated the vast strides that her ambition had made. The whole picture of Medora’s future in her own eyes was now changed. The new vision looked wild indeed, and made even Medora wince a little to hear it in her own tongue; yet it did not astonish Philander as much as she imagined, though she had reached it sooner than he expected her to do so.