A domicile of six months in South Dakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recall information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course, been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.
Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy.
Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement.

Life, instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman, was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming heavens.

An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.
The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn.

Why should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over ?--now that she knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious?
She looked at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.
But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidence would she want ?--what kind of witnesses?
Something more, no doubt, of both than she had already.

She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly.
If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free of each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must, for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.
What was the alternative?
She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood looking down upon him.