trange, 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_!"

The thought of what she had hoped from her marriage and of what she had,
filled her with the most passionate self-reproach. It must be at least
half her fault, since she and Paul made up but one whole. As she helped
'Stashie sort the dingy curtains, she was saying over and over to
herself that she was responsible, responsible as much as for Ariadne's
health. This conception so possessed her now that she felt herself able
to accomplish anything, even the miracle needed.

To have achieved this state of passionate resolution gave her for a
moment the sense of having started upon the straight road to escape from
her nightmare; and for the first time since the door had slammed behind
Paul she drew a long breath and was able to give more than a blind gaze
to the world about her.

She noticed that, though it was after twelve o'clock, Ariadne had not
been told to come to luncheon. When the little girl came running at her
mother's call, her vivid face flushed with happy play, Lydia knew a
throb of that exquisite, unreasoning parent's joy, lying too near the
very springs of life for any sickness of the spirit to affec