he knew she enjoyed the free time and the opportunities to travel together that their present way of life afforded , but he also knew that to a certain extent -- more so in the last few years than before theyd gone to china -- she shared his concern about the sameness of things lately , about the loss -- or maybe just misplacement -- of that jagged edge to their lives that had to do with discomfort and surprises and even , at times , the double-sided nature of danger and he sensed that she , too , might welcome certain kinds of changes , but her notion of what constituted moral responsibility was a finely tuned thing and there was very little room for adjustment ; when it came to certain kinds of compromises hed always known that flexibility was not one of talyas strongest points and hed often had reason to admire that in her , but this decision was shaping up to be a matter of sometimes subtle and often complicated trade-offs and he suspected that she might not see it that way at all .