However, now she is finally where she wants to be; side by side with Laurence Corbett. The HKU Scholars Hub. Delia Corbett, who is past thirty, married her second husband, Laurence Corbett, who is fifty-two, two months ago. I'm afraid it's rather bad at her age; and I don't know how she will resign herself to keeping quiet.”, “I'm very sorry,” said Laurence, sympathetically; “but water on the knee isn't dangerous, you know.”, “No — but the doctor says she mustn't go out for weeks and weeks; and that will drive her mad. It was like stepping from a gondola to an ocean steamer; at first she was dazed by the throb of the screw and the rush of the parting waters, but gradually she felt herself infected by the exhilaration of getting to a fixed place in the shortest possible time. Corbett answered her gaze for a moment; then his lids dropped, and he shifted his position slightly. He wondered uneasily if she were capricious; a man who has formed his own habits upon principles of the finest selection does not care to think that he has married a capricious woman. Consequently, Corbett suggests that Delia and he could go and spend the winter with Aunt Mary, making Delia even happier. Then came a flash of resistance—the heart's instinct of self-preservation. Edith Wharton’s 1895 short story, “The Lamp of Psyche,” tells the tale of Delia Corbett, a Boston woman living in Paris whose husband gives her a … She was not so confident of his being altruistic enough for Aunt Mary; but Aunt Mary's appreciations covered so wide a range that there seemed small doubt of his coming under the head of one of her manifold enthusiasms. a lamp, and look at him. In Edith Wharton's story, "The Lamp of Psyche" Delia Corbett has married Laurence Corbett and is in the full flush of love at the beginning of the story. There was a sufficient number of armchairs, and the tables (mostly marble-topped) were redeemed from monotony by their freight of books; but it had not occurred to Mrs. Hayne to substitute logs for hard coal in her fireplace, nor to replace by more personal works of art the smoky expanses of canvas “after” Raphael and Murillo which lurched heavily forward from the walls. Laurence is a man at whose side Delia can gain the social prestige she had never obtained when she was married t o Benson who was never truly accepted by the Boston society. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. She hopes that it is just a passing mood and that it will all be gone when they are back in their beloved Paris. For three days, Delia avoids asking her husband what he thinks of her aunt and she is relieved when he declares that he finds her charming and that he values her. They married very young, when Delia was nineteen, but she thinks that she has once loved him because he had beautiful blue eyes and always wore a gardenia in his coat. “She's charming,” Corbett returned, with the fine smile which always seemed like a delicate criticism. Mrs. Corbett was silent. But his coat sleeve was convincingly tangible; and, pinching it, she felt the muscles beneath. After Benson’s decease, Delia felt blissful since Benson’s death “[…] freed her from the obligation of concealment”. Corbett took her hand. And not having done so, how dared she condemn him unheard? She turned away, smiling carelessly at her insignificant reflection, and went back to her armchair near the balcony. But pray take note of the fact that I'm very sorry to leave. Weren't you often ill?” she asked. Delia likes to compare Benson with a poodle she once owned and other valueless things that she bought when she was still in her teens. 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