They each decided to have a hot bath and rest before dinner.
She was dressed in very severe perfect black, marvellous lines, waiting to be sculpted.
He told her so.
She pursed her lips.
They sat in front of the fire in the hall.
"Tell me a little more about your husband?" he said.
"What can I tell you? I know him so well. You see, I have loved him and hated him—I have become indifferent to him—and I appreciate him. But I have had nothing from him that a hundred other people have not had—except, perhaps, his name."
"Marly?"
She looked at him in amazement.
"Marly?" she laughed. "Marly is not even my own name. We are all of us so very monogamous when we love, proprietary, exclusive, jealous, whatever you like to call it. Edmond's character was like a pergola. You walked in and out. There were always roses and jasmine, clematis and wisteria, peeps of the garden and patches of the sky—but never a shut door—never one. Oh," there was a breaking passion in her voice—"how I longed for four walls, for a lock and key, for a dungeon, for bars. 'Don't you know,' I would say to him, 'that much trodden territory becomes neutral?' and he would smile and say, 'you are generous.'"