everything.

For years they had been a physical and mental outlet for her nature.
That love had no question of reciprocity or merit. She had always been
willing for them. Only it seemed to her all the rest of love should
come first. It occurred to her ironically how happy her marriage would
have been without her husband.

What was his love worth? It was only taxation--taxation without
representation. Had either of them any real love left?

Suddenly she stood on the brink of black emptiness. To live without
love; her whole nature, every life-habit, changed! _Oh, no, no,
no_! So the cold water sets the suicide struggling for shore.

Dear, dear! This would not do. Her nerves were getting the best of
her; she was losing her own dignity and sweetness--was on the verge of
a breakdown.

But to say so would be to invoke doctors, pointless questions, futile
drugs, and a period of acute affection from Sam--affection that took
the form chiefly of expecting it of her.

At times Judith thought of death as an escape, but she thought of no
other as being any more in her own hands; like so many people, she
quoted the Episcopal marriage-service as equal authority with the
Bible. She was too live to droop and break as some do. She had not
made herself the one armor that would have been effective--her own
shell. Friction that does not callous, forms a sore. Her love, her
utmost self, ached like an exposed nerve. She had not dreamed one's