In her two years of struggle to earn her livelihood Eugene had become more or less a memory, and, in spite of the fascination and interest he had always had for her, she did not blind herself to certain erratic tendencies of his. He might appear at any moment, so she judged him, with vows of eternal love, and straightway, if the mood seized him, begin a new picture and forget her. And so she married Hepworth largely that life might become a successive series of introductions to an ever varying unexpected. Instead, although her quest was feverish, she encountered only the commonplace. She was like a mouse which has discovered the inadequacy of cheese to quench its soul-yearnings. What remained? The truth of the matter was that Perdita's world, which seemed so hopelessly askew to her, had an architectural defect. It lacked that sure antidote to ennui--a Bluebeard's closet. Now Perdita was young and healthy. She had great curiosity, and a certain insatiable mental quality which would have successfully riveted her interest to life, but for one fact, her heart was as ardent and insatiable as her intelligence--and her husband bored her. There is no record of Bluebeard boring any of his wives. She became more and more conscious of a continual little plaint running always through her consciousness, like the sad, monotonous murmur of an ever-flowing stream, a little unceasing plaint against life in the abstract and life in its personal application. "There must be as many worlds as there are points of view," so ran the stream, "but my life's like a wedding-cake, all white and sparkling and overdecorated, and absolutely insipid. Candy! That's what it is ... my rooms are all pink and white, and I'm crusted over with pink sugar." Perdita always thought in color. "I'm tired of all this pink and white and baby-blue existence. I'd welcome a little scarlet and black sin for a change. Oh, it's just your corsets over again. You're put in them when you're about fifteen and you never get out of them again. We women think in corsets, breathe in them. We live in them mentally, and accept all their constrictions and restrictions as a matter of course. We take in drafts of air, and expand our lungs and say we're emancipated, but we only expand as much as the corsets allow. We've put our world in corsets, to confine us still more ... mine used to be mended, frequently washed, with some of the bones broken; now I have many pairs, brocade, satin--cloth of gold, if I want them--but they are the same thing, corsets, corsets on our bodies and brains and lives.