She sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the facts of her life. She was eager to face them, to understand them that she might go on understandingly. She had the courage to face the facts relating to herself and Stuart. That was a thing she had not dared do. With them, love _had_ to last, for love was all they had. They had only each other. They did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as the love between them failing. Well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had changed. There was something strangely freeing in just letting herself see it. Of course there had been change; things always changed. Love changed within marriage--she did not know why she should expect it to be different with her. But in the usual way--within marriage--it would matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the changing. Then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. But with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. And they had never been able to relax in the reassuring sense of the lastingness of their love. She had held herself tense in the idea that there was no change, would be none. She had a feeling now of having tried too hard, of being tired through long trying. There was relief in just admitting that she was tired. And so she let herself look at it now, admitting that she had been clutching at a vanished thing. It would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living been opened to them. Then together they could have reached out into new experiences. Their love had been real--great. Related to living, surely it could have remained the heart of life. Her seeing now that much of the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great sadness she would have expected. She knew now that in her heart she had known for a long time that passion had gone. Facing it was easier than refusing to see. It ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it. Of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense interest, but one with other interests. Unrooted, detached, it might for the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. If simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change, growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new things not left desolate through that sense of the passing of old ones. Frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too hard. She was tired; she believed that Stuart too was tired.