He went about putting up the windows and closing the outside shutters, a confirmed habit. Linda rose with her invariable sense of separation, the feeling that, bound on a journey with a hidden destination, she was only temporarily in a place of little importance. It was like being always in her hat and jacket. Arnaud shook down the grate; then he gazed over the room; it was all, she was sure, as it had been a century ago, as it should be--all except herself. XXV Yet her marriage had realized in almost every particular what she had--so much younger--planned. The early suggestion, becoming through constant reiteration a part of her knowledge, had been followed and accomplished; and, as well, her later needs were served. Linda told herself that, in a world where a very great deal was muddled, she had been unusually fortunate. And this made her angry at her pervading lack of interest in whatever she had obtained. Other women, she observed, obviously less fortunate than she, were volubly and warmly absorbed in any number of engagements and pleasures; she continually heard them, Arnaud's connections--the whole superior society, eternally and vigorously discussing servants and bridge, family and cotillions, indiscretions and charities. These seemed enough for them; their lives were filled, satisfied, extraordinarily busy. Linda, for the most part, had but little to do. Her servants, managed with remote exactness, gave no trouble; she had an excellent woman for the children; her dress presented no new points of anxiety nor departure ... she was, in short, Arnaud admitted, perfectly efficient. She disposed of such details mechanically, almost impatiently, and was contemptuous, no envious, of the women whose demands they contented. At the dinners, the balls, to which Arnaud's sense of obligation both to family and her took them against his inclination, it was the same--everyone, it appeared to Linda, was flushed with an intentness she could not share. Men, she found, some of them extremely pleasant, still made adroit and reassuring efforts for her favor; the air here, she discovered, was even freer than the bravado of her earlier surroundings. This love-making didn't disturb her--it was, ultimately, the men who were fretted--indeed, she had rather hoped that it would bring her the relief she lacked. But again the observations and speculation of her mature childhood, what she had heard revealed in the most skillful feminine dissections, had cleared her understanding to a point that made the advances of hopeful men quite entertainingly obvious. Their method was appallingly similar and monotonous. She liked, rather than not, the younger ones, whose confidence that their passion was something new on earth at times refreshed her; but the navigated materialism of greater experience finally became distasteful. She discussed this sharply with Arnaud: “You simply can't help believing that most women are complete idiots.”