and said to herself

    AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath offreedom seemed to blow into her face. 　　Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last monthshad dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, andno one else's. She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyesat the stately facades of the La Muette quarter, theperspectives of bare trees, the awakening glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would never againbe able to buy .... 　　In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and said to herself: "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimminghats?" She met work-girls streaming out under a doorway, andscattering to catch trams and omnibuses; and she looked withnewly-wakened interest at their tired independent faces. "Whyshouldn't I earn my living as well as they do?" she thought. Alittle farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with softlytrotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in hercapacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: "Whyshouldn't I be a Sister, and have no money to worry about, andtrot about under a white coif helping poor people?"All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glancedback at enviously, were free from the necessities that enslavedher, and would not have known what she meant if she had toldthem that she must have so much money for her dresses, so muchfor her cigarettes, so much for bridge and cabs and tips, andall kinds of extras, and that at that moment she ought to behurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy, where herpermanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognizedand ratified. 　　The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as withstifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing longpanting breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowlyand aimlessly, she began to saunter along a street of smallprivate houses in damp gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. 　　She sat down on a bench. Not far off, the Arc de Triompheraised its august bulk, and beyond it a river of lights streameddown toward Paris, and the stir of the city's heart-beatstroubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She seemedto be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and asshe got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty inthe evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if theglittering avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadowsfrom which it takes its name, and as if she were a ghost amongghosts.