AS days went on she became more than ever persuaded of the fatalism of those suggestive, common words, “Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?” That woman, with the soiled red lining to her kicked-up petticoat--that woman, with the loosely sensuous mouth, big tongue, and rolling bright eyes, had emerged from the gray routine of her particular suburban corner, merely as a warning. Those comically meaningless words became a gospel. She was always saying them, puzzling over them. They were on her pale lips as she looked questioningly into Edred’s face. Once she woke up and found herself saying them in her sleep. It was too stupid. But, if only that persistent quoting of them, in silence, that continual battering of them at the door of her distracted brain, would bring solution! If she could take hold of some slight clew! She found herself constantly longing for proof of Edred’s unfaithfulness. That, she thought, would end her love--her reckless, shameful love for an unworthy object: love that blows, terrible suggestions, the cruelest words and looks could not kill. If she could free herself from that horrid, paralyzing coil of Love! She used to dog his steps with the patient sleuth-like tread of an intent panther. She followed him into strange places often enough--unseen. She was always watching, waiting. Other wives waited and watched, hoping all the time that nothing was wrong, that they still had faithful husbands, might still keep their homes together with honor. But Pamela dogged Edred desperately--much more desperately than she would have done had there been the smallest chance of happiness left for them. She only fiercely prayed that there might be some entanglement, that there was some other woman--weak, innocent, or criminal--in the background. It meant so much more to her than mere conjugal peace and trust; her experience had made her bitterly scornful of married life: you could never successfully blend romance and joint housekeeping. She was playing for a much higher, nobler stake--her own independence. A wife was an individual first, a mere married woman afterward. She was conscious from time to time of the absolute isolation of each human being who treads the world. One flesh! Bare hearts! What empty jargon! One could look into the other one’s eyes and be breeding murder, worse than murder, all the time. This life, the beings with whom we were accidentally thrown in contact during our half-conscious sojourn--mere detail! There was a splendid, terrifying isolation about everyone. Each alone! She used to look at them curiously, speculatively; figures moving along the yellow streets at night, in tender twos, in merry companies--and yet alone. Each one shut in, cut off from all perfect communion, by the film of his own individuality. Each brain its own secret world. Each body, under such varying garments, absolutely its own, in spite of vows, ardent protestations, respectable and legal shackles.