Had she allowed herself any illusions about the experiment, the experience would have been humiliating; but Helen was not humiliated, she had not deceived herself for a moment.

She had, open-eyed, been trying for the 'other things,' and she had only just missed them.

She had intended to marry a very important person who much admired her.

She had been almost sure that she could marry him if she wanted to, and she had found out that she couldn't.

It had not been, as in her youth, her own shrinking and her own recoil at the last decisive moment.