The Medusa-apparition was made effective beyond Lydia's conception by the shock it gave Gwendolen actually to see Grandcourt ignoring this woman who had once been the nearest in the world to him, along with the children she had borne him. And all the while the dark shadow thus cast on the lot of a woman destitute of acknowledged social dignity, spread itself over her visions of a future that might be her own, and made part of her dread on her own behalf. She shrank all the more from any lonely action. What possible release could there be for her from this hated vantage ground, which yet she dared not quit, any more than if fire had been raining outside it? What release, but death? Not her own death. Gwendolen was not a woman who could easily think of her own death as a near reality, or front for herself the dark entrance on the untried and invisible. It seemed more possible that Grandcourt should die:--and yet not likely. The power of tyranny in him seemed a power of living in the presence of any wish that he should die. The thought that his death was the only possible deliverance for her was one with the thought that deliverance would never come--the double deliverance from the injury with which other beings might reproach her and from the yoke she had brought on her own neck. 
Her appearance was made effective beyond her conception by the shock it gave Gwendolen actually to see Grandcourt ignoring this woman, who had once been the nearest in the world to him, along with his children. And this dark shadow thus cast spread itself over her visions of a solitary future. What possible release could there be for her, but death? Not her own death. Gwendolen could not easily think of her own death as a near reality. It seemed more possible that Grandcourt should die:- and yet not likely.
