st--because, in spite of the sentimentalists,
it's the man who stands to lose most. You'll have to give up the Iron
Works: which you don't much care about--because it won't be particularly
agreeable for us to live in New York: which you don't care much about
either. But you won't be sacrificing what is called "a career." You made
up your mind long ago that your best chance of self-development, and
consequently of general usefulness, lay in thinking rather than doing;
and, when we first met, you were already planning to sell out your
business, and travel and write. Well! Those ambitions are of a kind
that won't be harmed by your dropping out of your social setting. On
the contrary, such work as you want to do ought to gain by it,
because you'll be brought nearer to life-as-it-is, in contrast to
life-as-a-visiting-list....'

"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 i