"Leave me, leave me, and don't come here again!... I have a right to care for any man I please."
"Ah! Ibsen encore," said Paul, tauntingly.
"No, not Ibsen," she replied in a weak voice, "only a free woman—free even to admire the man whose name I bear," she added, her temper sinking to a sheer monotone.
"Free?" he sarcastically echoed. The shock of their voices filled the room. Paul angrily stared out of the window at the thin trees in dusty Rittenhouse Square, wondering when the woman would stop her tiresome reproaches. Ellenora's violent agitation affected her; and the man, his selfish sensibilities aroused by the most unheroic sight in the world, slowly descended the staircase, grumbling as he put on his hat....
Too cerebral to endure the philandering Paul, Ellenora Vibert is still in Philadelphia. She has little hope that her husband will ever make any sign.... After a time her restless mind and need of money drove her into journalism. To-day she successfully edits the Woman's Page of a Sunday newspaper, and her reading of an essay on Ibsen's Heroines before the Twenty-first Century Club was declared a positive achievement. Ellenora, who dislikes Nietzsche more than ever, calls herself Mrs. Bishop. Her pen name is now Nora Helmer.
TANNHÄUSER'S CHOICE
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