“She threw back her head with a sudden laugh. ‘And the joy of not having any more visits to make! I wonder if you’ve ever thought of _that?_ Just at first, I mean; for society’s getting so deplorably lax that, little by little, it will edge up to us--you’ll see! I don’t want to idealize the situation, dearest, and I won’t conceal from you that in time we shall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall have had in the interval! And then, for the first time we shall be able to dictate our own terms, one of which will be that no bores need apply. Think of being cured of all one’s chronic bores! We shall feel as jolly as people do after a successful operation.’ “I don’t know why this nonsense sticks in my mind when some of the graver things we said are less distinct. Perhaps it’s because of a certain iridescent quality of feeling that made her gaiety seem like sunshine through a shower.... “‘You ask me to think of myself?’ she went on. ‘But the beauty of our being together will be that, for the first time, I shall dare to! Now I have to think of all the tedious trifles I can pack the days with, because I’m afraid--I’m afraid--to hear the voice of the real me, down below, in the windowless underground hole where I keep her.... “‘Remember again, please, it’s not Woman, it’s Paulina Trant, I’m talking of. The woman in the next house may have all sorts of reasons--honest reasons--for staying there. There may be some one there who needs her badly: for whom the light would go out if she went. Whereas to Philip I’ve been simply--well, what New York was before he decided to travel: the most important thing in life till he made up his mind to leave it; and now merely the starting-place of several lines of steamers. Oh, I didn’t have to love you to know that! I only had to live with _him_.... If he lost his eye-glasses he’d think it was the fault of the eye-glasses; he’d really feel that the eyeglasses had been careless. And he’d be convinced that no others would suit him quite as well. But at the optician’s he’d probably be told that he needed something a little different, and after that he’d feel that the old eye-glasses had never suited him at all, and that _that_ was their fault too....’ “At one moment--but I don’t recall when--I remember she stood up with one of her quick movements, and came toward me, holding out her arms. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m pleading for my life; do you suppose I shall ever want for arguments?’ she cried.... “After that, for a bit, nothing much remains with me except a sense of darkness and of conflict. The one spot of daylight in my whirling brain was the conviction that I couldn’t--whatever happened--profit by the sudden impulse she had acted on, and allow her to take, in a moment of passion, a decision that was to shape her whole life. I couldn’t so much as lift my little finger to keep her with me then, unless I were prepared to accept for her as well as for myself the full consequences of the future she had planned for us....