The Swing of the Pendulum by Adriana Spadoni

Mary had decided to stay on and work for an M. A. at Columbia. She was busy choosing courses of study and quarreling with professors about prerequisites, so Jean, by pleading extra work herself, managed to keep away from Gramercy Park for the first days of Gregory's going.

In the morning she went to the office and at night she came back. She tried to read and turned page after page with a detached sense of accomplishment in which all understanding of the words was lost. Finally, one night, when she had read from eight till eleven, and found that it was not the same book she had been reading so dutifully for days, Jean threw it across the room, and, standing defiantly in the center of the floor, faced the thoughts that she had refused entrance since the morning she had crept to bed in the gray dawn.