For worldly women--and there were so many kinds of those, besides the merely fashionable--she had always noted that its value was not intrinsic, but commercial; not a crown of dignity, but just a marketable asset.

She did not dread in the least what people might say of her friendship with Miltoun; nor did she feel at all that her indissoluble marriage forbade her loving him.

She had secretly felt free as soon as she had discovered that she had never really loved her husband; she had only gone on dutifully until the separation, from sheer passivity, and because it was against her nature to cause pain to anyone.

The man who was still her husband was now as dead to her as if he had never been born.

She could not marry again, it was true; but she could and did love.