They conserved
their romance through all their plighted and united life. Herminia
had afterwards no recollections of Alan to look back upon save
ideally happy ones.
So six months wore away. On the memory of those six months Herminia
was to subsist for half a lifetime. At the end of that time, Alan
began to fear that if she did not soon withdraw from the Carlyle
Place School, Miss Smith-Waters might begin to ask inconvenient
questions. Herminia, ever true to her principles, was for stopping
on till the bitter end, and compelling Miss Smith-Waters to dismiss
her from her situation. But Alan, more worldly wise, foresaw that
such a course must inevitably result in needless annoyance and
humiliation for Herminia; and Herminia was now beginning to be so
far influenced by Alan's personality that she yielded the point with
reluctance to his masculine judgment. It must be always so. The man
must needs retain for many years to come the personal hegemony he
has usurped over the woman; and the woman who once accepts him as
lover or as husband must give way in the end, even in matters of
principle, to his virile self-assertion.
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