Mortimer was drunk--he often was; it was the least heinous of his crimes. She went upstairs crying, and went to bed, but she knew she could not sleep that night, and yet she took no bromide or sulphonal. She wanted to think--she meant to think things out--so she lay, and thought, and thought, with extreme intensity and vigour, if with little coherence. So intent was she that she lay quite straight out and still, and did not toss, while the trains of thought succeeded each other with extraordinary rapidity. The tall clock on the stairs outside her door ticked loudly and monotonously, and the whole problem of her life arrayed itself and measured out its phases to the beat of the pendulum, which seemed to balance them, as it were. Mortimer was impossible! He had always been impossible! His conduct this evening was of a piece with his whole conduct to her, ever since a few weeks after marriage. Halcyon weeks, which every woman has a right to expect, while they in no wise concern or affect the life that follows after. His taunt about the circumstances of her marriage to him she dismissed, she knew quite well that she had provoked him to it, he had not meant it, there was no foundation for it. He had wooed and won her in the usual, commonplace way, been timid and attentive, and had begged her for locks of her hair. And she had been complaisant and loving, and had treasured his photograph and made excuses for its ugliness, just like any other foolish girl with her first sweetheart. Why had she done all this? Why had she bought that rose-coloured satin dress last Christmas, that she had taken such a dislike to, since, that she had only worn it twice? Her marriage was a very nearly parallel case, only she had been able to afford to throw aside the one bad bargain, and she had been obliged to abide by the other. “Yes, I can’t say I did not know my own mind, such as it was, when I took Mortimer, but, unfortunately, it isn’t the same mind that I have now. It was a child’s mind. The whole fabric of our bodies alters every seven years, they say--well, that means our minds, too--body and soul are one in my creed. It was not this me that was glad to marry Mortimer, as he so politely put it--” she laughed bitterly. “It was another me, who had not read Ibsen.” She laughed again. “Books alter one--reading alters one--life alters one, after all! I married Mortimer like a blind puppy, not knowing, not seeing. I am nothing wonderful, but I do think I am too good for him! Why did I not see it then? Why is a girl such a fool? Why does nobody tell her? It is very hard. They say, as one has made one’s bed, so one must lie on it.... But suppose I decline to lie on it?”