She thought suddenly, “Suppose I give up the New-Thought way, always distracting your attention to something else, always suppressing your desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to.  Suppose I try the Freud way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting yourself go, unresisting.”  It was worth trying.

She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and let herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been longing to ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic interchange of looks between Marsh and Marise, the day after her arrival, the day of the picnic-supper in that stupid old woman’s garden.  That was when she had first known that something was up.

* * * * *

Why, how easy it was to let yourself go!  They were right, the Freudians, it was the natural thing to do, you did yourself a violence when you refused to.  It was like sailing off above the clouds on familiar wings, although it was the first time she had tried them. . . .  Marise would fall wholly under Marsh’s spell, would run away and be divorced.  Neale would never raise a hand against her doing this.  Eugenia saw from his aloof attitude that it was nothing to him one way or the other.  Any man who cared for his wife would fight for her, of course.

And it was so manifestly the best thing for Marise too, to have a very wealthy man looking out for her, that there could be no disturbing reflexes of regret or remorse for anybody to disturb the perfection of this fore-ordained adjustment to the Infinite.  Then with the children away at school for all the year, except a week or two with their father . . . fine, modern, perfect schools, the kind where the children were always out of doors, Florida in winter and New England hills in summer.  Those schools were horribly expensive . . . what was all her money for? . . . but they had the best class of wealthy children, carefully selected for their social position, and the teachers were so well paid that of course they did their jobs better than parents.

Then Neale, freed from slavery to those insufferable children, released from the ignoble, grinding narrowness of this petty manufacturing business, free to roam the world as she knew he had always longed to do . . . what a life they could have . . .  India with Neale . . .  China . . .  Paris . . . they would avoid Rome perhaps because of unwelcome memories . . .  Norway in summer-time.  Think of seeing Neale fishing a Norway salmon brook . . . she and Neale on a steamer together . . . together . . .

She caught sight of her face in the mirror . . . that radiant, smiling, triumphant, young face, hers!

Yes, the Freud way was the best.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SOUL OF NELLY POWERS

July 20.