those people--the revolutionaries, I mean, the rebels--they live, they're
the only ones who do live. The rest of us degenerate in a painless
paralysis we think of as pleasure. Look at me! I'm incapable of
committing a single original act, even though I might conceive one. Well,
there was a time when I should have been equal to anything and wouldn't
have cared a--a damn."

I believed her....

I fell into the habit of dropping in on Nancy at least twice a week on my
way from the office, and I met her occasionally at other houses. I did
not tell Maude of that first impulsive visit; but one evening a few weeks
later she asked me where I had been, and when I told her she made no
comment. I came presently to the conclusion that this renewed intimacy
did not trouble her--which was what I wished to believe. Of course I had
gone to Nancy for a stimulation I failed to get at home, and it is the
more extraordinary, therefore, that I did not become more discontented
and restless: I suppose this was because I had grown to regard marriage
as most of the world regarded it, as something inevitable and humdrum, as
a kind of habit it is useless to try to shake off. But life is so full of
complexities and anomalies that I still had a real affection for Maude,
and I liked her the more because she didn't expect too much of me, and
because she didn't complain of my friendship with Nancy although I should
vehemently have denied there was anything to complain of. I respected
Maude. If she was not a squaw, she performed religiously the traditional
squaw duties, and made me comfortable: and the fact that we lived
separate mental existences did not trouble me because I never thought of
hers--or even that she had one. She had the children, and they seemed to
suffice. She never renewed her appeal for my confidence, and I forgot
that she had made it.