In spite of her desolated heart, and of her primness, Rachel stepped
forward airily. She was going forth to an enormous event, namely, her
first apparition in the shopping streets of the town on a Saturday
morning as Mrs. Louis Fores, married woman. She might have postponed
it, but into what future? Moreover, she was ashamed of being diffident
about it. And, in the peculiar condition of her mind, she would have
been ashamed to let a spiritual crisis, however appalling, interfere
with the natural, obvious course of her duties. So far as the world
was concerned, she was a happy married woman, who had to make her
debut as a shopping housewife, and hence she was determined that her
debut should be made.... And yet, possibly she might not have ventured
away from the house at all, had she not felt that if she did not
escape for a time from its unbreathable atmosphere into the liberty of
the streets, she would stifle and expire. Wherever she put herself
in the house she could not feel alone. In the streets she felt alone,
even when saluting new acquaintances and being examined and probed by
their critical stare. The sight of these acquaintances reminded her
that she had a long list of calls to repay.
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