"In freedom!" she said again. "What—what do you mean?"
He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look of surprise.
"What do you mean?" she repeated.
And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.
"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw you."
She got slowly up from the sofa.
"Is that—all you mean?" she said.
"All! Isn't it enough?"
"But is it all? I want to know—I must know!"
The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly. The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer to her.