And in any case the melancholy was fleeting, at least it was fleeting that morning, for the lightness was stronger than the melancholy, the sense that she was escaping a prison she desired to escape, for her life had become fraught, and for so long there had been no way out, there had been that feeling, the feeling that there was no way out, but now it seemed that there might be a way out, that she could shed her skin as a snake sheds its skin, not violently, not even coldly, but rather to abandon the confinement of the past, and, unfettered, again, to grow.
