resolved that she would no longer let herself be
dominated by the inconsequent multiplicity of the trifling incidents
that filled their days.

If she could only get close to Paul she was sure that all would be well.
She made herself hope, with a brave belittling of the tangle that
baffled her, that perhaps just one long, serious talk with Paul would
be all that was needed. If she could just make Paul see what she saw, he
could tell her how to set to work to remedy things. Paul was so clever.
Paul was always so kind--when he saw!

She began watching for a favorable opportunity for this long, serious
talk, and as day after day fled past with only a glimpse of Paul
desperately in a hurry in the morning and desperately tired at night,
she was aware that her idea of the shape their life was taking had not
exaggerated the extent of the broad flood of trivialities that separated
them. Although the light laugh of her girlhood was rarer than before her
marriage, life had not proved it to be the result of mere animal
spirits. She still saw a great deal to laugh at, though sometimes it was
tremulous laughter, carrying her to the edge of tears. And she often
laughed to herself during these days at the absurd incongruity of what
her heart was swelling to utter and the occasions on which she would
have to speak.

'Stashie was away, tending her aunt who was ill, away for an indefinite
period, for Patsy's steady wages quite sufficed to keep his cousin at
home to care for his grandmother. Lydia sometimes feared the
satisfaction she took in Patsy's exemplary career was tinctured with
vainglory for her own share in it, but, if so, she was punished for it
now, since it was his very prosperity that took away from her the only
steady domestic help she had ever been able to keep. She had now only a
cook, a slatternly negress, with a gift for frying chicken and making
beaten biscuit, and a total incapacity to conceive of any other activity
as possible for her. Lydia had telephoned to the two employment agencies
in Endbury and had been informed, by no means for the first time, that
the supply of girls willing to work in the suburbs had entirely given
out. For the time being there was simply not one to be had, so for the
next few days Lydia, as well as Paul, was more than usually occupied;
but her fixed intention to "talk things over with him" was not shaken.
And yet--day after day went by with the routine unvaried--there was no
time in the