Here in Dodge's room she was as placid, almost, as though she were in the library at home. That customary term took its place in her thoughts before she recognized that, with her, it had shifted. However, it was unimportant--home had never been a magical word to her; it belonged in the vast category which, of such universal weight, left her unstirred. She resembled those Eastern people restlessly and perpetually moving across sandy deserts as they exhausted, one after another, widely separated scanty oases. She studied the objects around her with the pleased recognition that they were unique, valuable, and in faultless taste. Then she fell to wondering at the difference had Dodge been poor: she would have come to him, Linda knew, just the same. But, she admitted frankly, it would have been uncomfortable. Perhaps that--actual poverty, actual deprivation--was what her character needed. A popular sentiment upheld such a view; she decided it was without foundation. There was no reason why beauty, finely appropriate surroundings, should damage the spirit. Her mind turned to an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being herself. The word selfish occurred to her but to be met unabashed by the query, why not? Selfishness was a reproach applied by those who failed to get what they wanted to all who succeeded. Linda wasn't afraid of public opinion, censure; she didn't shrink even from the injury to her husband. What Dodge would think, however, was hidden from her. She had no doubt of his complete acceptance of all she offered; ordinary obligations to society bound him as little as they held her. It would be enough that she wanted to come to him. She would bother him, change his habit of living, very little. Long years of loneliness had taught her to be self-sufficient. Linda would be too wise to insist on distasteful regularity in the interest of a comparatively unimportant well-being. In short, she wouldn't bother him. That must be made clear at once. More than anything else he would be inexpressibly delighted to have her with him, to find--at last--his love. Little intimacies of satin mules, glimpses, charming to an artist! He'd be faultless, too, in the relationships where Arnaud as well had never for a moment deviated from beautiful consideration. Two remarkable men. While her deficiency in humor was admitted, she saw a glimmer of the absurd in her attitude and present situation. The combination, at least, was uncommon. There had been no change in her feeling for either Arnaud or Dodge, their places in her being were undisturbed; she liked her husband no less, Dodge no better.