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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: marriage was a frank recognition of this truth, and a solemn
agreement between the contracting parties to keep faith with
themselves, and not to live together for a moment after complete
accord had ceased to exist between them. The new adultery was
unfaithfulness to self.
It was, as Westall had just reminded her, on this understanding
that they had married. The ceremony was an unimportant
concession to social prejudice: now that the door of divorce
stood open, no marriage need be an imprisonment, and the contract
therefore no longer involved any diminution of self-respect. The
nature of their attachment placed them so far beyond the reach of
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