She sometimes remembered what she
expected of these volumes, what _plein air_ sensations, or what profound
plunges, and did not quite like her indifference as to whether her
expectations were fulfilled. She discovered herself intellectually
jaded--there had been tiring excursions--and took to daily rides which
carried her far out among the rice-fields, and gave her sound nights to
sustain the burden of her dreaming days. She had ideas about her
situation; she believed she lived outside of it. At all events, she took
a line; the new Arab was typical, and there were other measures which
she arranged deliberately with the idea that she was making a physical
fight. Life might weigh one down with a dragging ball and chain, but one
could always measure the strength of one's opinions against these
things. She made it her sorry and remorseless task to separate from her
impulses those that she found lacking in philosophy, hinting of the
foolish woman, and to turn a cruel heel upon them. She stripped her
meditations of all colour and atmosphere; she would not accept from her
grief the luxury of a rag to wrap herself in. If this gave her a
skeleton to live with, she had what gratification there was in observing
that it was anatomically as it should be.
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