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It was spring again and the late afternoon air, which came through the open window by which Fabia was sitting, was sweet with the year’s new hope, even though borne over city roofs.  Fabia had dwelt with sorrow day and night until there was no one of its Protean shapes which she did not intimately know.  She had even attained to a certain tolerance of her own hysteria that first night when her uncle and her servants had had to care for her till morning.  It was the last service she had required of others.  Her daughter had hurried to her and spent weeks with her in watchful companionship.  Perilla had come back in the summer and gone with her to Sulmo.  But neither the love of the one child nor the grief of the other passed into the citadel where her will stood at bay before the beleaguering troops of pain.  They were newer to her than they usually are to a woman of her age.  The death of her child’s father had brought regret rather than sorrow.  Her will had been disciplined only by the habitual performance of simple duties which had given her happiness.  But untaught, unaided, it slew her enemies and left her victor.  Her daughters had long since given over worrying about her, had, indeed, begun to draw again upon her generous stores.  Only her uncle, who knew the cost of warfare better, still silently watched her eyes.  He knew that her victory had to be won afresh every night as soon as the aegis of the day was lifted.  For a long time this had meant nights of dry-eyed anguish, which threatened her sanity, or nights of weakening tears.  Through these months her uncle had come to see her every day.  He had not doubted the strength of her will, but he had feared that the strength of her body might be sacrificed to its triumph.  Her long days of self-control, however, repaired the ravages of the night hours, and little by little her strong mind, from which she had resolutely withheld all narcotics, reasserted its sway over her nerves.  She recovered her power to think.  To her a clear understanding of principles by which she was to decide the details of conduct had always been essential.

To-day, in this favourite hour of hers, when the mask laid by a busy day over the realities of life began to be gently withdrawn, she had set herself the task of analysing certain thoughts which had been with her hazily for over a week.  On Ovid’s birthday she had sent little presents to the grandchildren and written to her stepdaughter a letter which she hoped would make her feel that she was still the daughter of her father’s house.  In doing this she had been poignantly reminded of the birthday fete two years ago, of Perilla’s sweetness to her, and of their conversation, so light-hearted at the time, about woman’s place in the state.  Since then she had been wondering whether she could still say that it was enough for her to be a wife.  She was perfectly sure that she did not miss the outer satisfactions of being Ovid’s wife.  Except