Emptiness, silence, solitude in the place of constant activity; it had frightened her, had set before her a vision that her life had reached its peak, and henceforth would go down the decline.  Into that empty place had come a ringing, peremptory call back to personal and physical youth and excitement and burning sensations.  And with that blinding rebirth of physical youth had come a doubt of all that had seemed the recompense for the loss of it, had come the conception that she might be letting herself be fooled and tricked out of the only real things.

There had been many parts to this:  her revolt from the mere physical drudgery of her life, from giving so much of her strength to the dull, unsavory, material things.  This summer, a thousand times in a thousand ways, there had been brought home to her by Vincent, by Eugenia, the fact that there were lives so arranged that other people did all the drudgery, and left one free to perceive nothing but the beauty and delicacy of existence.  Now, straight at it!  With all the knowledge of herself and of life which she had gathered,—­straight at it, to see what this meant!  Did their entire freedom from drudgery give them a keener sense of the beauty and delicacy of existence?  Were they more deeply alive because of the ease of their lives?

She cast about her for evidence, in a firm, orderly search among the materials which life had brought to her.  Had she seen anything which could give evidence on that?  There was Eugenia; Eugenia and her friends had always lived that life of rich possessions and well-served ease.  What had it made of them?  Was their sense of beauty deeper and more living because of it?  No, not in the least.

She turned her inward eye on Eugenia’s life, on the lives of the people in that circle, in a long searching gaze.  Was it deep in eternal values?  Was it made up of a constant recurrence of sensitive aliveness to what is most worth responding to?  Odd, that it did not seem to be!  They were petulant, and bored, and troubled about minute flaws in their ease, far more than they were deep in communion with beauty.

Another piece of evidence came knocking at the door now, a picture of quaint and humble homeliness . . . herself standing before the stove with the roast on a plate, and little Mark saying fastidiously, “Oh, how nasty raw meat looks!” She recalled her passing impatience with the childishness of that comment, her passing sense of the puerile ignorance of the inherent unity of things, in such an attitude of eagerness to feed on results and unwillingness to take one’s share of what leads up to results.  Yes, it was more there, than in looking at Eugenia, that she could find evidence.  Did she want to be of those who sat afar off and were served with the fine and delicate food of life, and knew nothing of the unsavory process of preparing it?  It had seemed to her this summer, a thousand times with Vincent’s eyes on her, scornful of her present life, that she did want it, that she wanted that more than anything else.  Now let her look full at it.  She was a grown woman now, who could foresee what it would mean.