s_, and wriggling her toes loose in their lace-like silk stockings.
She would lie on her back, look up at the ceiling, and fix her mind on
the movement up and down of her navel in breathing, as the Vedanta
priest recommended to quiet the spirit. Perhaps she could even say,

"Om . . . om . . . om . . ."

as they did.

* * * * *

No, no she couldn't. She still had vestiges of that stupid, gross
Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness clinging to her. But she would outgrow
them, yet.

She lay there quiet and breathed slowly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
And into her mind there slowly slid a cypress-shaded walk with Rome far
below on one side, and a sun-ripened, golden, old wall on the other. She
stood there with Marise, both so young, so young! And down the path
towards them came a tall figure, with a bold clear face, a tender
full-lipped mouth, and eyes that both smiled and were steady.

Helplessly she watched him come, groaning in spirit at what she knew
would happen; but she could not escape till the ache in her throat
swelled and broke, as she saw that his eyes were for Marise and his
words, and all of his very self for which she . . .

So many years . . . so many years . . . with so much else in the
world . . . not to have been able to cure that one ache . . . and she did
not want to suffer . . . she wanted to be at rest, and have what she
needed. The tears rose brimming to her eyes, and ran down on each side of
her face to the pillow. Poor Eugenia! Poor Eugenia!

* * * * *

She was almost broken this time, but not entirely. There was some fight
left in her. She got up from the bed, clenched her hands tightly, and
stood in the middle of the floor, gathering herself together.

Down with it! Down! Down! Just now, at this time, when such an utterly
unexpected dawn of a possible escape . . . to give way again.

She thought suddenly, "Suppose I give up the New-Thought way, always
distracting your attention to something else, always suppressing your
desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to. Suppose I try the Freud
way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting yourself go, unresisting."
It was worth trying.

She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and let
herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been longing to
ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic interchange of looks
between Marsh and Marise, the day after