She had no
other vital standard. This she could measure, she could grasp it and
say, "Here I have a hold; it is so much harvested." But if some one had
written her a poem a thousand verses long, she would have said, "Yes, all
very fine, but let me see what it means; let me feel that it is so."
She had an inherent love of luxury and pleasure, which was far more
active in her now than when she married Jean Jacques. For a Spanish
woman she had matured late; and that was because, in her youth, she had
been active and athletic, unlike most Spanish girls; and the microbes of
a sensuous life, or what might have become a sensual life, had not good
chance to breed.
It all came, however, in the dullness of the winter days and nights, in
the time of deep snows, when they could go abroad but very little. Then
her body and her mind seemed to long for the indolent sun-spaces of
Spain. The artificial heat of the big stoves in the rooms with the low
ceilings only irritated her, and she felt herself growing more ample from
lassitude of the flesh. This particular autumn it seemed to her that she
could not get through another winter without something going wrong,
without a crisis of some sort.
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