"Why, yes, it _is_ simple."

I saw that my friend was undergoing some deep inner change of which this
room, this renovated barn, were mere symbols.

"Tell me," I said, "how you came to such a right-about-face."

"It's just that!" she returned earnestly, "It _is_ a right-about-face.
I think I am really in earnest for the first time in my life."

I had a moment of flashing wonder if her marriage had not been in
earnest, a flashing picture of Richard Starkweather with his rather
tired, good-humoured face, and I wondered if her children were not
earnest realities to her, if her busy social life had meant nothing.
Then I reflected that we all have such moments, when the richest
experiences of the past seem as nothing in comparison with the fervour
of this glowing moment.

"Everything in my life in the past," she was saying, "seems to have
happened to me. Life has done things _for_ me; I have had so few chances
of doing anything for myself."

"And now you are expressing yourself."

"Almost for the first time in my life!"

She paused. "All my life, it seems to me, I have been smothered with
things. Just things! Too much of everything. All my time has been taken
up in caring for things and none in enjoying them."