Every woman's hour comes, one time or another--whether she will or not." "Sepia, if you think that, because I hate my husband, I would allow another man to make love to me, you do not know me yet." "I know you very well; you do not know yourself, Hesper; you do not know the heart of a woman--because your own has never come awake yet." "God forbid it ever should, then--so long as--as the man I hate is alive!" Sepia laughed.
"A good prayer," she said; "for who can tell what you might do to him!" "Sepia, I sometimes think you are a devil." "And I sometimes think you are a saint." "What do you take me for the other times ?" "A hypocrite.

What do _you_ take _me_ for the other times ?" "No hypocrite," answered Hesper.
With a light, mocking laugh, Sepia turned away, and left the room.
Hesper did not move.

If stillness indicates thought, then Hesper was thinking; and surely of late she had suffered what might have waked something like thought in what would then have been something like a mind: all the machinery of thought was there--sorely clogged, and rusty; but for a woman to hate her husband is hardly enough to make a thinking creature of her.

True as it was, there was no little affectation in her saying what she did about the worthlessness of her life.

She was plump and fresh; her eye was clear, her hand firm and cool; suffering would have to go a good deal deeper before it touched in her the issues of life, or the love of it.