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"Then what are you going to do?"

"I don't know—I haven't thought."

Jenny crossed and uncrossed her large feet—she looked at her sister's little mules, motionless upon the fender.

"Is he—I mean, does he—treat you badly?" Mary laughed.

"Oh, no—husbands in our class don't as a rule, unless they're qualifying for statutory cruelty. Julian isn't cruel—he's very kind—indeed probably most people would say he was a model husband. I simply can't endure him, that's all."

"Incompatibility of temperament."

"That's a very fine name for it, but I daresay it's the right one. Julian and I are two different sorts of people, and we've found it out—at least I have. Also he's disappointed because we've been married seven years and I haven't had a child—and he lets me see he's disappointed. And now he's begun to be jealous—that's put the lid on."

She leaned back in her chair, her hands folded on her lap, without movement and yet, it seemed, without rest. Her body was alert and strung, and her motionlessness was that of a taut bowstring or a watching animal. As Jenny's eyes swept over her, taking in both her vitality and her immaculacy, a new conjecture seized her, a sudden question.