e an inch
before my nose. I'm in a perfect nightmare of perplexity all the time
because I can't make out what I'm driving at--or ought to--"

She went on more quietly, with a reasoning air: "Only look here,
Godfather, it came over me the other night, when I couldn't sleep, that
perhaps what's the trouble with me is that I'm _lazy_! I believe that's
it! I don't want to work the way Marietta does, and Mother does, and
even Madeleine does over her dresses and parties and things. It must be
I'm a shirk, and expect to have an easier time than most people. That
_must_ be it. What else can it be?"

The doctor made no protest against this theory, taking himself off in a
silence most unusual with him. Lydia did not notice this; nor did she in
the next two or three months remark that her godfather took quite
literally and obeyed scrupulously her exhortation to leave her in peace.

She was in the grasp of this new idea. It seemed to her that in phrasing
it she had hit upon the explanation of her situation which she had been
so long seeking, and it was with a resolve to scourge this weakness out
of her life that she now faced the future.

She found a satisfaction in the sweeping manner in which this new maxim
could be applied to all the hesitations that had confused her. All her
meditations heretofore had brought her nothing but uncertainty, but this
new catchword of incessant activity drove her forward too resistlessly
to allow any reflections as to whether she were going in the right
direction. She yielded herself absolutely to that ideal of conduct which
had been urged upon her all her life, and she found, as so many others
find, oblivion to the problems of the spirit in this resolute refusal to
recognize the spirit. It was perhaps during these next months of her
life that she most nearly approximated the Endbury notion of what she
should be.

She had yielded to Paul on the subject of the cook not only because of
her timid distrust of her own inexperienced judgment but because of her
intense reaction from the usual Endbury motto of "Husbands, hands off!"
She had wanted Paul to be interested in the details of the house as she
hoped to know and be interested in what concerned him, and when he
showed his interest in a request she could not refuse it. She hoped that
she had made a good beginning for the habit of taking counsel with each
other on all matters. But she thought and hoped and reflected very
little during these days.