For an instant she faced the possibility, the most terrible of any that had occurred to her, that the balance was changing between them; that she, so willing to be led, was to be forced to guide.

She had seen it happen so often between married couples--the weight of character begin on one side of the scale, and then slowly the beam would shift.

Once it had happened to her.

Was it to happen again?
No, she told herself; never with Farron.

He would command or die, lead her or leave her.
Mathilde knocked at her door, as she did every morning as soon as her stepfather had gone down town.