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268 ate longing after that vanishing springtime, the efflorescence of all that was light and bright and gay. She was not yet ready to be serious like the middle-aged world, grey and sober, resigned to its losses. Nor did the alternative of frivolity attract her. She was not frivolous; she wanted what was real to her, what was deeply valuable, and she would have that or nothing. Basil had in him an element of frivolity, something that tended to dissipate what she regarded as her own peculiar possession. And she recognised now that what she wanted instinctively was to rule him, to impose her own more passionate will upon him, just because she was emotionally at his mercy. … As for the ideal of perfect freedom, that youthful dream, it was gone, swept away by harsh contact with the facts of life. Neither of them could be free. She was bound in spirit, and Basil henceforth should be bound by her will. …