A ruthless question or two . . .  “Why did you say that about what a modern, free European woman would do in your place?  Are you trying to play up to some trumpery notion of a role to fill?  And more than this, did you really mean in your heart an actual, living woman of another race, such as you knew in Europe; or did you mean somebody in an Italian, or a French, or a Scandinavian book?” Marise writhed against the indignity of this, protested fiercely, angrily against the incriminating imputation in it . . . and with the same breath admitted it true.

It was true.  She was horrified and lost in grief and humiliation at the cheapened aspect of what had looked so rich before.  Had there been in truth an element of such trashy copying of the conventional pose of revolt in what had seemed so rushingly spontaneous?  Oh no, no . . . not that!

She turned away and away from the possibility that she had been partially living up to other people’s ideas, finding it intolerable; and was met again and again by the relentless thrust of that acquired honesty of thought which had worn such deep grooves in her mind in all these years of unbroken practice of it.  “You are not somebody in a book, you are not a symbol of modern woman who must make the gestures appropriate for your part . . .”  One by one, that relentless power seated in her many-colored tumultuous heart put out the flaring torches.

It had grown too strong for her, that habit of honesty of thought and action.  If this struggle with it had come years before she could have mastered it, flinging against it the irresistible suppleness and lightness of her ignorant youth.  But now, freighted heavily with experience of reality, she could not turn and bend quickly enough to escape it.

It had profited too well by all those honest years with Neale . . . never to have been weakened by a falsehood between them, by a shade of pretense of something more, or different from what really was there.  That habit held her mercilessly to see what was there now.  She could no more look at what was there and think it something else, than she could look with her physical eyes at a tree and call it a dragon.

If it had only been traditional morality, reproaching her with traditional complaints about the overstepping of traditional bounds, how she could have overwhelmed it, drowned out its feeble old voice, with eloquent appeals for the right to growth, to freedom, to the generous expansion of the soul, of the personality, which Vincent Marsh could give.  But honesty only asked her neutrally, “Is it really growth and freedom, and generous expansion of the soul?” Poor Marise felt her arms fall to her side, piteous and defenseless.  No, it was not.