She felt what was coming.
“I’m sure I can—if you will only trust me a little longer!” she said desperately.
He dropped her hand.
“You mean that, though I ask you to give it up, you want to continue the case?”
She grew dizzy, his figure swam before her.
“I—I think I do.”
“Why—why——” He broke off. “I can’t tell you how surprised I am!” he exclaimed. “I have said nothing of late because I was certain that, if I gave nature a little time in which to work, there would be no need to argue the matter with you. I was certain that, now that love had entered your life, your deeper woman’s instincts would assert themselves and you would naturally desire to withdraw from the case. In fact, I was certain that your wish to practise law, your ambition for a career outside the home, would sink into insignificance—and that you would have no desire other than to become a true woman of the home, where I want my wife to be, where she belongs. Oh, come now, Katherine,” he added with a rush of his dominating confidence, taking her hand again, “you know that’s just what you’re going to do!”
She sat throbbing, choking. She realized that the long-feared battle was now inevitably at hand. For the moment she did not know whether she was going to yield or fight. Her love of him, her desire to please him, her fear of what might be the consequence if she crossed him, all impelled her toward surrender; her deep-seated, long-clung-to principles impelled her to make a stand for the life of her dreams. She was a tumult of counter instincts and emotions. But excited as she was, she found herself looking on at herself in a curious detachment, palpitantly wondering which was going to win—the primitive woman in her, the product of thousands of generations of training to fit man’s desire, or this other woman she contained, shaped by but a few brief years, who had come ardently to believe that she had the right to be what she wanted to be, no matter what the man required.
“Oh, come now, dear,” Bruce assured her confidently, yet half chidingly, “you know you are going to give it all up and be just my wife!”
She gazed at his rugged, resolute face, smiling at her now with that peculiar forgiving tenderness that an older person bestows upon a child that is about to yield its childish whim.