It was extraordinary, this quality in the taste of her wrong which made her completed sense of it seem rather to soften than to harden and it was the more extraordinary the more she had to recognise it; for what it came to was that seeing herself finally sure, knowing everything, having the fact, in all its abomination, so utterly before her that there was nothing else to add--what it came to was that, merely by being WITH him there in silence, she felt, within her, the sudden split between conviction and action.

They had begun to cease, on the spot, surprisingly, to be connected; conviction, that is, budged no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil--but action began to hover like some lighter and larger, but easier form, excited by its very power to keep above ground.

It would be free, it would be independent, it would go in--wouldn't it ?--for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own.

What would condemn it, so to speak, to the responsibility of freedom--this glimmered on Maggie even now--was the possibility, richer with every lapsing moment, that her husband would have, on the whole question, a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds.

It struck her truly as so new that he would have felt hitherto none to compare with it at all; would indeed, absolutely, by this circumstance, be REALLY needing her for the first one in their whole connection.