After the hundredth performance of her play Matilda declared that she was tired, and wanted a rest, and she threw up her part. She came to him and said she wished to go away.
“Very well. Where shall we go?”
“I want to go alone.”
And she waited as though she expected a protest from him. For a moment she gazed at him almost with pleading in her eyes, and then she governed herself, stood before him almost assertively and repeated:
“Alone.”
In the aggression he felt the strain in her and told himself she was wanting to get away from him, to break the habit of their life, to come back to him fresh, to advance toward him, reach up to the prize he held in his hands. He told himself that to break in upon her diffidence might only be to thicken the wall she—(he said it was she)—had raised between them. He said:
“Won’t you mind?”
“No. I want to be alone.”
“Where will you go then?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. By the sea, I think.”