She was dressed in a grey whipcord coat and skirt with a grey swathed turban. She looked distant--on the brink of disappearance--not so much as if she were going to travel but as if she were going to vanish. She regarded the flowers with grave concentration. It was as if she felt for them a stern passionate devotion. She took one of the white roses and stroked it--as if it were a shy mother with her first child. Then she said: "I want to go for a long walk." They walked for miles and miles. The mist sprinkled her hair with dew-drops. It looked quite white. Her eyes were deep and brooding and you couldn't catch them. "Paula," Maurice said, "how remote you are." "Am I?" she said. And it made her more remote than ever. He walked desperately, as if each step were an obstacle painfully overcome. She walked with a swaying unconscious rhythm, as if she did not know what she was doing. She cut off his perfunctory attempts at conversation with a monosyllable. When they got home they were both tired. They each decided to have a hot bath and rest before dinner. She was dressed in very severe perfect black, marvellous lines, waiting to be sculpted. He told her so. She pursed her lips. They sat in front of the fire in the hall. "Tell me a little more about your husband?" he said. "What can I tell you? I know him so well. You see, I have loved him and hated him--I have become indifferent to him--and I appreciate him. But I have had nothing from him that a hundred other people have not had--except, perhaps, his name." "Marly?" She looked at him in amazement. "Marly?" she laughed. "Marly is not even my own name. We are all of us so very monogamous when we love, proprietary, exclusive, jealous, whatever you like to call it. Edmond's character was like a pergola. You walked in and out. There were always roses and jasmine, clematis and wisteria, peeps of the garden and patches of the sky--but never a shut door--never one. Oh," there was a breaking passion in her voice--"how I longed for four walls, for a lock and key, for a dungeon, for bars. 'Don't you know,' I would say to him, 'that much trodden territory becomes neutral?' and he would smile and say, 'you are generous.'" Maurice was looking into the fire. "Poor little Paula," he said. "But you were his only wife." "Yes," she said, "a law-given copyright." "Paula," he said, "will you do something for me?" "I wonder. There are surely no somethings where we are concerned." "I want you to describe several dresses to me. Your own perfect divine dresses. I want them for my book." "So I am to be made use of, am I?" Her eyes were flashing. He was not looking at her. "Yes," he said, "I am going to steal some of your genius." She had left him. He was not surprised. She never said "Good-night." The next day she had gone--very early, leaving no address, no letter.