The alleviation which came through this conception of her husband was tempered by the final disappearance of her old feeling that Paul was stronger, clearer-headed, than she, and that if she could but once make him stop and understand the forces in their life which she feared, he could conquer them as easily as he conquered obstacles in the way of their material success. She now felt that he was not even as strong as she, since he could not get even her faint glimpse of their common enemy, this Minotaur of futile materialism which had devoured the young years of their marriage and was now threatening to destroy the possibility of a great, strongly-rooted affection which had lain so clearly before them. She felt staggered by the responsibility of having to be strong enough for two; and as another day wore on this new preoccupation became almost as absorbing an obsession as her anger of the night before. But this was steadying in the very velocity with which her mind swept around the circle of possible courses of action. Her thoughts hummed with a steady, dizzy speed around and around the central idea that something must be done and that she was now the only one to do it. 'Stashie thought to herself that she had never seen Mrs. Hollister look so well, her eyes were so bright, her cheeks so pink. Lydia had set herself the task of getting down and sorting the curtains in the house, preparatory to sending them to the cleaner. Above the piles of dingy drapery, her face shone, as 'Stashie had noted, with a strange, feverish brightness. Her knees shook under her, but she walked about quickly. Ariadne ran in and out of the house, chirping away to her mother of various wonderful discoveries in the world of outdoors. Lydia heard her as from a distance, although she gave relevant answers to the child's talk. "It has come down," she was saying to herself, "to a life-and-death struggle. It isn't a question now of how much of the best in Paul, in me, in our life, we can save. It's whether we can save _any_! How dirty lace curtains get! It must be the soft coal--yes, it is a life and death struggle--I must see to Ariadne's underwear. It is too warm for these sunny days.--Oh! Oh! Paul and I have quarreled! And what about! About such sickeningly trivial things--how badly 'Stashie dusts! There are rolls of dust under the piano--but I thought people only quarreled--quarreled terribly--over great things: unfaithfulness, cruelty, differences in religion! Oh, if I only now had a religion, a religion which would--Yes, Ariadne; but only to the edge of the driveway and back. How muddy the driveway is! Paul said it should have more gravel--_Paul!_ How _can_ he come back to me after such--Madeleine says married people always quarrel--how can they look into each other's eyes again! We must escape that sort of life! We must! We _must_!"