Now she never went anywhere without seeing that deeper flame come into men’s eyes as they beheld her, that sudden gravity settle over women’s faces as they scrutinized her, and saw in her as powerful a rival as they could possibly encounter. And while all this went on, there went on in her heart _pari passu_ the endless dreariness and barrenness and disgust to which she had never tried to put any stop or any limit, but which she had allowed in silence to eat away at her inmost soul. She allowed it almost unconsciously, but in her heart was the deep conviction that to do otherwise, to ‘make the best of things,’ as the happy-go-lucky saying has it, to attempt to reconcile herself to her lot and her husband, would have been moral degradation beyond words to describe. Her ennui, her scornful silent endurance, were not petulance--they were religion. Such a thing as had happened to her might happen to fifty women of weak or shallow or vain nature, and they might have come to accept the inevitable, and lived lives of almost contented respectability, the loss of their latent finer feelings compensated for by the possession of the money and place for which their bodies had been sold. She was not one of the fifty; she was the fifty-first, the exception, and the slow tragedy in which she lived was just as inevitable and as natural as that sunset succeeds sunrise, and sunrise sunset. She did not acquiesce, she did not submit, she did not content herself. She endured, and resented. But that did not kill her, either. She told herself that she was as bad as the worst of them; she just lived on and slept when she was not prevented from doing so, and ate, and did not become melancholy; she read books and newspapers, and remembered what was in them, and was, when she came to think about it, very much surprised at herself for doing so. ‘How long can I endure it? For ever.’ Thus, so far, had run the question and answer. But to-day, when she asked the question, there was not cold, fastidious disgust in her mind, but raging rebellion, and the question, ‘How long can I?’ seemed to turn into, ‘Why should I?’ It was early in the forenoon when the unpleasant interviews with the nurse and Morrison had taken place. It was still considerably before twelve when she rose from her chair, went into the hall, took a broad straw hat from the hook on which it hung, and went out into the blazing August sunshine.