She had everything that she
wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood
was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear
bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the
present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid
surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to
interest her because she knew them too well. She knew by heart the very
machinery of their existence, the secret mental springs which moved them
so mechanically; and she felt to-day that if they had been watches, she
could have taken them apart and put them together again without
suspending for a minute the monotonous regularity of their works. Even
Gideon Vetch, who might have held a surprise for her, had differed from
the rest in one thing only: he had not seen that she was beautiful! And
it wasn't that she was breaking. To-day because of her mood of
depression, she appeared drooping and faded; but that night, a week ago,
in her velvet gown and her pearls, she had looked as handsome as ever.
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