"You live all alone here?" he asked, looking round the bright little room.
"Yes, I can, you see. That's the advantage of being married."
"I never looked at marriage in that light before."
"No," she laughed. "You've not looked at it in any light, you know; only from the outer darkness."
As his eyes rested on her lying there in graceful repose, he felt a grudge against the way fate was treating him. He wished he were ten or fifteen years younger; he wished he had nothing to lose; he wished he had no conscience. Given these desirable things, he believed that he could break down this indifference and banish this repose. Ora had done nothing to create such a belief; it grew out of his own sturdy and usually justifiable self-confidence.
"Have you a conscience?" he asked her suddenly.
"Oh, yes," she answered, "afterwards."
"That's a harmless variety," he said wistfully.
"Tiresome, though," she murmured with her eyes upturned to the ceiling as though she had forgotten his presence. "Only, you see, something else happens soon and then you don't think any more about it." Ora seemed glad that the cold wind of morality was thus tempered.