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<Text id=LesSuBD>
<Author>Lessing, Doris</Author>
<Title>The Summer Before the Dark</Title>
<Edition>New York: Vintage Books, 1973</Edition>
<note>Pagination stops at p. 138</note>
<Date>1970-1973</Date>
<body>
<loc><locdoc>LesSuBD1</locdoc><milestone n=1>
<div0 type=chapter n=1><div0.title>At Home</div0.title>
A woman stood on her back step, arms folded, waiting.
<p>Thinking? She would not have said so. She was
trying to catch hold of something, or to lay it bare so
that she could look and define; for some time now she
had been " trying on " ideas like so many dresses off a
rack. She was letting words and phrases as worn as
nursery rhymes slide around her tongue: for towards
the crucial experiences custom allots certain attitudes,
and they are pretty stereotyped. <i>Ah yes, first love!</i>.
<i>Growing up is bound to be painful!. My first child</i>,
<i>you know. But I was in love!. Marriage is a</i>
<i>compromise. I am not as young as I once was</i>. Of
course, . . .
