The idea which her excitement instantly suggested to Paul was reassuring. Before Ariadne came, he remembered, Lydia had had queer spells of nervous tension. He patted her on the shoulder and spoke in the tone used to soothe a nervous horse. "There, Lydia! There, dear! Don't get so wrought up! Remember you're not yourself. You do too much thinking. Come, now, just curl up here and put your head on my--" Lydia feared greatly the relaxing influence of his caressing touch. If once he put forth his personal magnetism, it would be so hard to go on. She drew away gently. "_Can_ anybody do too much thinking, Paul? The trouble must be that I'm not thinking right. And, oh, I want to, so! _Please_ help me! Everybody says you have such a wonderful head for organization and for science--if I were a dynamo that wasn't working, you could set me right!" Paul laughed, and made another attempt to divert her. "I couldn't if the dynamo looked as pretty and kissable as you do!" He was paying very little attention to what she said. He was only uncomfortable and uneasy to see her so white and trembling. He wished he had proposed taking her out for the evening. She had been having too dull a time. He ought to see that she got more amusement. They said that comic opera now running in town was very funny. "Paul, listen to me!" she was crying desperately as these thoughts went through his head. "Listen to me, and look honestly at the way we've been living since we were married, and you _must_ see that something's all wrong. I never see you--never, never, do you realize that? except when you're in a raging hurry in the morning or tired to death at night, and when I'm just as tired as you are, so all we can do is to go to bed so we can get up in the morning and begin it all over again. Or else we tire ourselves out one degree more by entertaining people we don't really like--or rather people about whose real selves we don't know enough to know whether we like them or not--we have them because they're influential, or because everybody else entertains them, or because they can help us to get on--or can be smoothed over so they won't hinder our getting on. And there's no prospect of doing anything different from this all the days of our life--" "But, look-y here, Lydia, that's the way things _are_ in this world! The men have to go away the first thing in the morning--and all the rest of what you say! _I_ can't help it! What do you come to me about it for? You might as well break out crying because I can't give you eyes in the back of your head. That's the way things are!" Lydia made a violent gesture of unbelief. "That's what everybody's been telling me all my life--but now I'm a grown woman, with eyes to see, and something inside me that won't let me say I see what I don't--_and I don't see that_! I don't _believe_ it has to be so. I can't believe it!"