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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Balloons
+
+Author: Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2005 [EBook #15156]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLOONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kathryn Lybarger and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BALLOONS
+
+BY
+
+ELIZABETH BIBESCO
+
+_Author of "I Have Only Myself to Blame," etc._
+
+NEW YORK
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+_1922_
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+   I  HAVEN                                                9
+        _To Clarence Day, Jr._
+
+  II  TWO PARIS EPISODES                                  21
+        _To Anthony Asquith_
+          I: THE STORY OF A COAT
+          II: BALLOONS
+
+ III  COURTSHIP                                           27
+
+  IV  "DO YOU REMEMBER...?"                              29
+        _To Leslie Hartley_
+
+   V  THE MARTYR                                          37
+        _To H.G. Wells_
+
+  VI  A MOTOR                                             53
+        _To Alice Longworth_
+
+ VII  THE MASTERPIECE                                     60
+        _To Harold Child_
+
+VIII  TEA TIME                                            67
+        _To Sylvester Gates_
+
+  IX  THE END                                             78
+
+   X  MISUNDERSTOOD                                       83
+        _To John Maynard Keynes_
+
+  XI  COUNTERPOINT                                        92
+        _To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta_
+
+ XII  VILLEGIATURA                                       102
+        _To Marcel Proust_
+
+XIII  AULD LANG SYNE                                     132
+        _To Harold Nicolson_
+
+ XIV  TWO TAXI DRIVES                                    147
+        _To Paul Morand_
+          I: SUNSHINE
+          II: LAMPS
+
+  XV  A TOUCH OF SPRING                                  155
+        _To W.Y. Turner_
+
+ XVI  FIDO AND PONTO                                     161
+
+
+
+
+BALLOONS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HAVEN
+
+[_To CLARENCE DAY, JR._]
+
+
+"You should only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age.
+It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no
+longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
+Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry."
+
+Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
+winter, "Avoid wet feet and germs." In spite of both, we are still
+subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.
+
+But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
+Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the
+grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
+knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace
+of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the operation!
+
+It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all
+is difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl with
+bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All the
+young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories or
+bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, "Well, I never!"
+
+Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
+Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
+impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime pinnacle of
+thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of untidiness, of
+unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three ingredients
+compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True, her cheeks
+lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent
+whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food,
+ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss
+Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.
+
+She discovered that men were her only interest--probably she had always
+known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was
+glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
+belonged to that strange, tropical species--the other sex.
+
+Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
+"what men liked in a woman." It was, it appeared, necessary to be
+bright--relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
+which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
+necessary to have "something to say for yourself" which in Miss Wilcox's
+hands, meant a series of pert tu quoques of the "you're another"
+variety. Her two other axioms, "Don't let them see that you care for
+them" and "feed the beasts," were alas! never put to the test as no man
+had ever considered the possibility of being loved by Miss Wilcox and
+the feeding stage had, in consequence, never been reached.
+
+Nevertheless, in defence of her theses, Miss Wilcox was rough-toughed in
+public, while in private, she studied recipes and articles on cooking.
+As hope gradually began to give way to experience, Miss Wilcox came to
+the conclusion that she frightened men off. They regarded her, she
+imagined, as cold and indifferent and unapproachable. "I don't cheapen
+myself," she would say, forgetting her conservatory days. In her heart
+of hearts, she imagined herself in humble surrender, laying her strong
+personality at the feet of a still stronger one and being gently lifted
+up on to a pedestal. It was curious, she thought, that her wonderful,
+unique gift of tenderness should go unperceived. But how is one to show
+that one is tender? It is so difficult for a maiden lady, living alone.
+She saw visions of a huge man with whimsical, smiling eyes, who after
+seeing her two or three times would call at her cottage. He would stand
+in the door and simply say, "Ellen," and she would put her head on his
+shoulder and cry gently while he stroked her hair. "Does my loving you
+make you sad, little one?" he would say, and she would answer, "No, no,
+they are tears of happiness."
+
+Miss Wilcox thought it would be delightful to be called "little one."
+And then, rather nervously and tremulously, she would murmur, "I am
+afraid I am not very beautiful," and he would laugh a deep, joyous laugh
+and say, "To me, you are the most beautiful woman in the world."
+
+But it never happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without
+consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took
+advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop
+in to tea.
+
+She tried to learn lawn-tennis and chess, but driving a ball into a net
+and studying problems in the Sunday papers becomes very monotonous. It
+was extraordinary how little provision life seemed to have made for
+superior people with fastidious tastes, whereas an empty head and a
+pretty face conquers the world! Miss Wilcox was very proud of the
+epigram, "empty heads and pretty faces." She used it frequently, more
+in sorrow than in anger. Vera was an excellent example. She was
+incapable of "conducting a conversation," she never read a book, but
+simply because her eyes sparkled and somehow or other, she always
+reminded you of a Shepperson drawing, she was invariably surrounded by a
+host of adorers. She was indifferent to the axioms, "boys will be boys"
+and "gentlemen are different." In her philosophy, "girls would be boys"
+and the difference between the sexes was simply one of what you might
+and might not do.
+
+"A positive savage," Miss Wilcox would explain and then, "You should be
+more womanly, dear; men like a womanly woman." And Vera's eyes would
+sparkle maliciously, for men undoubtedly did like Vera.
+
+I do not know at what moment in life, if ever, we realise that we are
+neither George Sands nor Juliets. Of course, if we are not beautiful, we
+recognise early that beauty is nothing. What are features? The only
+thing that matters is to have charm and expression. Then comes that
+horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism. Is it possible that, though
+we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either? That we will have to
+go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to
+the triumphantly ugly? Miss Wilcox knew that she was not exactly
+clever. But after all, what is prettiness and "men don't like clever
+women." So she consoled herself with the thought that though her manner
+"permitted no liberties," the warm tenderness of her true nature must be
+apparent to the really discerning.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox! She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and
+lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof. She would have liked to have been
+seductive and a little wicked, but she had found it easier to be
+dignified and very good. Easier but no more satisfactory. Evidently
+charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe. A
+dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.
+
+Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox. Lady Mary (Vera's mother) was always
+asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all
+sorts. On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the
+curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite
+and almost guilty pleasure to her. Was it, she wondered, altogether fair
+to let him think that Mr. Simpson loved her? But she did enjoy it so
+much, the nervous agonising sense of expectancy and then the sudden hot
+blush. "Their little secret," Sir Harry called it and though, of course,
+it was very wicked of her to let him continue under a misapprehension,
+it was so difficult to clear the matter up, as, the more she protested,
+the more confused she became, the more he was bound to think that there
+was something in it.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox, battling with her conscience when Mr. Simpson's
+passion was an invention of Vera's to whom old maids and curates were
+simply stage properties. Vera with her long legs and her laughing eyes
+and her happy, unimaginative youth--how was she to know that the
+Simpsons of life stand for romance and mystery and longings unachieved?
+To some people the impossible is impossible. One fine day they wake up
+in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands
+and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.
+
+Miss Wilcox was not like that. She couldn't settle down to decorating
+the church and organising village entertainments. She woke up every
+morning sure that something was going to happen and went to bed every
+night dissatisfied in proportion to her confidence.
+
+And then, quite close together, two things did happen. Miss Wilcox was
+left a small fortune and Vera became engaged to be married.
+
+The wedding, of course, was a great dramatic event. The preparations
+engulfed everybody. What flowers should the triumphal arches be made of
+and were the fair or the dark bridesmaids to be considered in the
+bridesmaids' dresses? Miss Wilcox gave her advice freely and tied cards
+on to presents but she felt unaccountably depressed. This, of course,
+was because dear little Vera whom she had known since a child, whom she
+had loved as a child, was leaving them and plunging into this strange,
+unknown adventure. What an uncertain thing marriage, what an elusive
+thing happiness! At nights she would dream of white satin figures
+shrouded in white tulle veils, of shy, passionate bridegrooms and shy,
+radiant brides. Sometimes she would see Vera's face and sometimes her
+own and often in the morning, she would find her pillow wet. "It will be
+you and Simpson next," Sir Harry teased her. But somehow the remark no
+longer pleased her and she no longer blushed.
+
+And then, one day she couldn't bear it any more. Without saying a word
+to any one she went to London. A thick orange fog greeted her, a
+wonderful, mysterious fog, creating immense prehistoric silhouettes, a
+fog which freed you from old accustomed sights and sounds so that your
+individuality seemed at last to be released and to belong exclusively to
+you.
+
+Gratefully Miss Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to
+her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement
+peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last
+she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back
+again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely she
+pushed the door open. The brightness blinded her, the sudden warmth made
+her feel dizzy. Weakly she sat on a chair. A sympathetic salesman asked
+her if he could do anything for her. "No, thank you," she murmured
+faintly, "if I might sit here a moment."
+
+Gradually she recovered and walked out again. The fog was thicker than
+ever. The traffic had stopped. People bumped into her with muttered
+apologies. Hesitatingly, wearily, she walked along. At last, she reached
+another jeweller's. Firmly, quickly she walked in. How was she to ask
+for what she wanted?
+
+"What can I do for you, Madam?"
+
+She looked up like a frightened animal.
+
+"I've lost my wedding ring," she stammered. "It was a broad gold one.
+I--I don't want my husband to discover it."
+
+How easy it was after all.
+
+The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of
+rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering
+them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her.
+It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and
+quite unlike herself.
+
+Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married
+ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There
+is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss
+Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. But
+still, she felt safer at the Ritz--there is something so conspicuous
+about a quiet hotel.
+
+The next day the fog had been cleared away and the sun, emerging after a
+day's rest, sparkled with refreshed gaiety. Miss Wilcox, in deep
+mourning, went out to buy new black clothes--lovely they were,
+intentionally, not accidentally black, filmy chiffons, rippling
+cr�pe-de-chines, demure cashmeres, severe, perfect tailleurs. Here and
+there touches of snowy crepe gave a relief suitable to deep unhappiness
+and her widow's cap, low on the forehead, was the softest and most
+nun-like frame to her face. Seeing herself in the glass, Miss Wilcox
+blushed with pleasure.
+
+"My husband was so fond of clothes," she murmured to the vendeuse with a
+break in her voice, "and he always said that nothing became a woman like
+black."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a little village on the Seine. An old grey church nestles among
+the huddling houses. A platoon of poplars guards the river, and little
+pink almond bushes spring out of patches of violets. Miss Wilcox,
+calling herself Mrs. Demarest, lives in a charming old house surrounded
+by box hedges, paved paths lead through beds of old-fashioned
+sweet-scented flowers, stocks and wall flowers and mignonette and moss
+roses, lavender, myrtle, thyme and sweet geranium. Mr. Demarest, it
+appears, could not bear the wonderful new varieties of huge, smell-less
+blooms.
+
+Miss Wilcox has never gone out of mourning, though she sometimes wears
+grey and mauve. Her gracious sweetness has made her much beloved in the
+village where her gentle presence is loved and honoured. She can often
+be seen bringing soup to some old invalid, or taking flowers to the
+church she loves to decorate. Her charity and her piety are revered by
+all. Sometimes in the evening she plays a game of cards with her
+neighbours or chess with the cur�. It is known that a rich man from the
+adjoining town proposed marriage to her, but she continues to mourn her
+late husband with profound devoted fidelity. She is too unselfish to
+force her grief on to others, but every one knows that her heart is
+broken. Sometimes she talks of her sorrow--very gently, very
+uncomplainingly, and there are always flowers in front of the photograph
+of her husband on her writing table. He must have been a magnificent
+man--huge, with whimsical smiling eyes. Every one in the village feels
+as if they had known him. They have heard so much about him. He had only
+seen Miss Wilcox three times when he walked into her cottage. Standing
+in the doorway--"Ellen," he said, and she went to him--
+
+"I suppose I knew it was for always," she explains gently. "It has been
+a short always on earth--but so happy, so very happy."
+
+All the girls of the village go to Mrs. Demarest before they marry. Her
+wise counsel and the radiant memory of her happiness lights them on
+their way.
+
+"I have had everything," she says, "and now I have found peace."
+
+It is the severity of suffering bravely borne. She has called her house
+"Haven."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TWO PARIS EPISODES
+
+[_To ANTHONY ASQUITH_]
+
+I: THE STORY OF A COAT
+
+
+"Le Printemps a br�l� cette nuit." The news greeted me when I was
+called. It had no special significance, but spread through my
+semi-consciousness into meaningless patterns. Then I woke up. "Comme
+c'est terrible," I said, "quelle chance que �a s'est fait la nuit!" I
+saw visions of leaping flames and angry reds reflected in the sky.
+
+Then I remembered. It was at the Printemps that I had chosen my divine
+coat. They had promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The loveliest
+coat in the world--"fum�e de Londres," the salesman had called it, and
+in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that ascends in
+solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too of silvery
+grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows. In shape it
+was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand, long with a
+flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky when the sun has
+set.
+
+I saw my coat giving new life to the dying flames. Tongues of fire were
+darting down the lines of silvery grey chenil, greedily eating up the
+smoky back-ground. Finally, a mass of ashes--purple-grey like their
+victim--was carried by the wind into the unknown. All day long my coat
+became more and more beautiful. The texture was solid smoke and the
+stripes were shafts of moonlight. How it shimmered through the mirage of
+my regrets.
+
+When I got home that afternoon I found a cardboard box. The inspector of
+the Printemps, knowing that I was leaving for England, had brought me a
+coat from the reserve stock which was not kept in the shop. Infinitely
+touched, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I wrote a love letter to
+the Printemps.
+
+Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
+white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
+purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
+coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more "la cr�ation" of the
+Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
+Resurrection is a dangerous thing.
+
+My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
+from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
+Life of Christ?
+
+
+II: BALLOONS
+
+All my life I have loved balloons--all balloons--the heavy English sort,
+immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light,
+gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of
+them. How well I remember when I was little, the colossal effort of
+blowing up the dark red, floppy India rubber until it got brighter and
+brighter and more and more transparent, though it always stayed opaque
+enough to hold the promise of still greater bigness. And then the
+crucial moment when ambition demanded an extra puff and a catastrophe
+became ever more imminent.
+
+And now, when I suddenly see a huge bunch of wonderful bloated tropical
+grapes, overpowering some old woman in the street, I feel so happy! In
+Paris, of course, they are quite different--balloons have much too much
+flavour to be international--they are smaller and lighter in colour and
+gayer and more reckless--they always look as if they were out on a
+spree, just waiting to break loose from the long string by which they
+are tied, in a huge multi-coloured sunshade, to a stick. There is
+something very independent about French balloons--you feel you couldn't
+make a pet of one.
+
+But I am telling you things you know already, instead of getting on with
+my story.
+
+It was the sort of spring day when all the buds look like feathers and
+the sun has been bathing in milk. I was walking down the Champs Elys�es,
+sniffing secret violets in the air and feeling as joyous as if the world
+were entirely full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by
+whom I would never see again. In the distance a barrel organ became more
+and more distinct and as I drew nearer and the noise grew louder, I
+wanted to dance and sing. It was in tune with my mood. A symbol of the
+crescendo of living.
+
+And then, in the distance, I saw Cousin Emily crawling towards me like a
+black beetle with her half-shut eyes that see everything except beauty
+and innocence. Though I avoided her and the day was as lovely as ever, I
+had become conscious that the world was inhabited and that there were
+people who didn't whistle--or want to whistle--in the streets.
+
+I tried to think of larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged
+back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver
+photograph frames. Then I had an idea. "I will buy a balloon," I
+thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one
+like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright
+yellow one? White was charming too, and sailed up into the sky like a
+tight, round cloud--
+
+I reached the Galleries Lafayette.
+
+"Des ballons, s'il vous plait. Joujoux," I added. I was told to go
+straight on, to turn to the right and the left, to go up three steps and
+down three steps--but my mind wandered as it always does when I am
+listening to directions that I have to follow. By an unseemly scramble I
+got into an over-crowded lift. I seemed to be treading on children and
+reclining on tight, upholstered bosoms. At random, I chose the third
+floor and found myself among a forest of lamps. Desperately determined
+not to risk another struggle for the lift, I tried to find the
+staircase. At last, after endless enquiries and--it seemed--going back
+five steps for every three I had gone forward, I reached the toy
+department. Breathless, bedraggled, hot and exhausted, I clutched the
+arm of the first saleswoman I saw. "Des ballons, Madame," I gasped.
+
+She looked at me with contempt, "Les ballons, ca ne se vend pas, ca se
+donne."
+
+For a moment I was awed by the aristocratic magnificence of balloons.
+How superb, how reckless! Very humbly I appealed to her,
+
+"Pouvez-vous, voulez-vous me donner un ballon?"
+
+"Les ballons, ca ne se donne pas apres cinq heures," she said.
+
+I didn't press her. How could I? By how many thousands of years of
+tradition might not the habits of balloons have been fixed? Their lives
+were evidently strangely and remotely unlike our lives. Wearily I walked
+downstairs, not snubbed but humbled and a little awed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later I was walking down the Champ Elys�es sniffing at the
+secret violets in the air. I had forgotten Cousin Emily and the world
+was full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by. Suddenly,
+at the other side of the street I saw a bursting sunshade of balloons,
+emerald and ruby, transparent white and thick, solid yellow, a birthday
+bouquet from a Titan to his lady. Reverently, lovingly, I looked at
+them, my heart full of joy, but I did not cross the street.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+COURTSHIP
+
+
+"I do love yachting," she said, "to see the sea change from aquamarines
+and diamonds to sapphires and emeralds, with thick unexpected streaks of
+turquoise. To sail away into the unknown, away from your own life----"
+
+She was looking dreamily in front of her to the blue beyond the mimosa.
+
+"The sea is jolly," he said.
+
+"To feel that you are leaving land behind you and your friends and your
+relations and your duties and what are called your pleasures. To be
+free," she murmured.
+
+"There's nothing like horses," he said. "Their very smell does you good.
+An hour's gallop before breakfast in summer, a twenty minutes' run with
+the hounds in winter----"
+
+A week later they were engaged to be married. I wondered whether he
+would take to yachting or she to riding or both to golf.
+
+I didn't see them for five years. And then, I met her at Melton. She had
+taken a house for the winter. "So he won," I reflected to myself.
+
+"Have you done much yachting lately?" I asked her.
+
+"Yachting?" she said, "why it's my idea of hell. I'm the worst sailor in
+the world. A sea as calm as a pond finishes me."
+
+"How is your husband?" I murmured weakly. "Is he coming down here to
+hunt?"
+
+"Tommy?" she laughed. "Why he's never known a horse from a cow."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"DO YOU REMEMBER----?"
+
+[_To LESLIE HARTLEY_]
+
+
+There are so many delightful things about being a bride besides actual
+happiness, little peaks of pleasure that gradually sink into the level
+of existence, unimportant, all-important things that never come again.
+To begin with, there is your wedding ring which keeps glistening up at
+you, unexpectedly making such an absurd difference, not only to the look
+of your hand but to everything else, as well. And there are your trunks,
+shiny and untravelled, with glaring new initials almost shouting at you,
+so very unlike other people's battered luggage with half obliterated
+labels sprawling over it.
+
+And trousseau clothes are quite unlike other clothes--not prettier,
+often uglier--but different. Your shoes and stockings match, not yet
+having begun that uneven race which, starting from the same mole, ends
+with a fawn-colored shoe and a grey blue stocking. Your hats go with
+your dresses and your sunshades with both. You have an appropriate
+garment for all occasions, instead of always being--as you once were
+and soon will become again--short of something. Altogether, there is no
+other word for it--you are equipped.
+
+And then you feel exhilarated and responsible--your jewels are still new
+and so is the strange, beautifully embroidered monogram on your
+handkerchiefs and underclothes. Also, for the first time in your life,
+you have a jet evening dress with a train and your maid calls you
+"Madam."
+
+Lucy was extremely pleased about all of these things. She was pleased,
+too, to have married a foreigner, to be sailing away into a new milieu,
+where she would be surrounded by the strange exciting faces of her
+husband's friends. It would be delightful to have nothing to do, but
+make yourself liked, to be automatically disentangled from all of your
+own complicated, complicating relationships with nothing around you but
+a new world to conquer. And how thrilled and curious every one must be
+about her. What sort of a woman had succeeded in catching dear old Tony!
+Tony, who was so delightfully, so essentially, a man's man. There had
+been Vivian, of course, but no one quite knew the rights and the wrongs
+of that and it was over anyway. Tony was so deuced unsusceptible (Lucy
+prided herself on being able to think in English), unsophisticated, too,
+about women, but with a sense of self-preservation like an animal's. And
+now he had gone and married an American and a Bostonian. Americans, one
+knew, were heiresses and Bostonians were blue-stockings. The lady, it
+appeared, was not very rich, but of course, Tony would never have
+married for money. It was all very puzzling.
+
+And then, Lucy imagined herself walking into a room full of strange,
+curious faces and some one murmured, "That is Tony's wife," and every
+one looked up. She was wearing a shimmering, silvery blue dress and she
+was looking her very, very best. An old lady told her that she ought
+still to be in school and a young man told her that she was a jolly
+lucky woman and Tony a jolly lucky man, by Jove.
+
+Lucy was sure that that was the way Englishmen talked.
+
+And on their way home, people agreed that they could understand any
+man's falling in love with her. Tony talked a lot about his men friends.
+Women meant nothing to him. He had, Lucy knew, once been engaged to a
+woman--Vivian, she had been called--rumour had woven a pattern of
+legends about it, but he had never seemed anxious to discuss it. People
+said he had behaved badly--but how was one to tell? Those things were
+always so complicated. Usually, every one ended by behaving badly. At
+any rate, the girl had made a brilliant marriage, which might or might
+not mean a broken heart. It was, Lucy thought tenderly, so
+characteristic of Tony to have sown such legitimate wild oats. An
+engagement contracted and broken off in gusty fits of honour.
+
+"You look very lovely," he smiled at her.
+
+She was shimmering in silvery blue, her eyes like cloudy star sapphires,
+her hair like primroses and ashes.
+
+In the motor she leant against him, a discreet gentle pressure. She
+always gave you a feeling of delicately intertwined reticencies and
+avowals, a faint New England flavouring which she had never lost.
+
+"I do hope they'll like me," she murmured.
+
+Dinner was a great success. Lucy loved her neighbours and her neighbours
+loved her, while secretly congratulating themselves on having always
+been right about Boston (which they had never visited and of which they
+knew nothing).
+
+After dinner a few guests trickled in for the tiny dance that was to
+follow. It was all very much as Lucy had imagined it, old ladies
+delighted by her youth, old men delighted by her prettiness. Every one
+saying that she was very un-American (by which they meant unlike the
+Americans they had known).
+
+Then, suddenly, a hushed silence grabbed hold of all the various
+conversations. Tony got up. His hostess was saying, "I want to present
+Mrs. Everill." Some one in a corner gave a little suppressed laugh,
+Lucy looked.
+
+She saw a thin, dark woman with charming irregular features and a figure
+which looked as if it had been put into her black velvet dress with a
+shoehorn, and she heard her say in a low voice which somehow seemed to
+creep inside shut parts of you, "Tony and I are very old friends." They
+were coming straight to her and then, next thing she knew was that voice
+again, saying, "Mrs. Everill, you must forgive me if I say that, for the
+moment, you are to me, just Tony's wife. But, of course, I know that to
+be that you must be a great many other things besides."
+
+Lucy knew that every one was looking at them, not at her, Lucy, the
+bride (and she had been so proud and happy--childishly happy--to be a
+bride), not at Tony, not even at Lady Dynevor, but at _them_, at the
+situation. It seemed to Lucy so indecent, so vulgar.
+
+"You will love Lucy, Vivian," Tony said quietly, and Lucy looked up at
+the charming, gracious apparition so dominant, with her beautifully
+friendly manner. Her eyes looked as if she could never find the bottom,
+as if tears were just going to well up and drown them.
+
+"Of course I shall," she said, and there was a little edge on her voice,
+as if it were going to break. That was the feeling she gave you, Lucy
+thought, of being on the brink of something, a tenseness like the moment
+when the conductor's baton is raised before you have been released by
+the music.
+
+"How ill you look," Tony was saying. Vivian laughed,
+
+"You always said that, do you remember----?"
+
+Conversation was buzzing again. Lucy turned to her neighbour. Through
+what he was saying, she could hear Tony--"your white velvet dress--do
+you remember...?"
+
+She got up to dance. The room seemed to whirl round her while she stood
+quite still.
+
+"Of course, we know all about Boston, Mrs. Everill," her partner was
+saying, "it produces beans and Cabots and blue-stockings--and brides,"
+he added, smiling.
+
+Tony and Vivian were still sitting on their sofa. As she passed, she
+heard Vivian laugh, "Do you remember?"
+
+The evening seemed to Lucy interminable. Tony was very good. He did his
+duty very nobly, dancing with every one, even his wife.
+
+At half-past one they went home.
+
+"How charming Lady Dynevor is," Lucy murmured.
+
+"Charming?" Tony looked puzzled. "Vivian?"
+
+It obviously seemed to him an almost grotesquely irrelevant, inadequate
+word. And then, feeling that something was expected of him, "She is a
+wonderful woman, loyal, faithful, a real friend."
+
+"She is very pretty," Lucy said.
+
+"Pretty, is she? I hadn't noticed it." Again he seemed puzzled, as if it
+were really too difficult to connect up these absurd adjectives with
+Vivian. Then an idea occurred to him.
+
+"You're not _jealous_, sweetheart, are you?"
+
+"No," she lied.
+
+"Vivian is--well, Vivian," he explained, making matters worse. And Lucy
+knew that if she had said "beautiful, fascinating, majestic," if she had
+used all the superlatives in the world, they would have seemed to him
+equally irrelevant and inadequate. But Tony was very much in love with
+his wife and she knew it and soon, in his tender, whimsical, loving,
+teasing way, he had made her perfectly happy again.
+
+She was standing in front of her dressing-table, her cendre
+hair--shadows shot with sunlight--falling like a waterfall over her
+shoulders. With one hand she was combing it, with the other she fingered
+a bundle of snapshots taken on their honeymoon--lovely snapshots, full
+of sunshine and queer, characteristic positions and expressions. They
+might, she thought, have been taken by a loving detective.
+
+Tony came in.
+
+"Do you remember," she said--and then, suddenly, with a wave of misery,
+she realised it. The phrase did not belong to her.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MARTYR
+
+[_To H.G. WELLS_]
+
+
+I, myself, have always liked Delancey Woburn. To begin with, there is
+something so endearing about the way he displays his defects, never
+hiding them or tidying them away or covering them up. There they are for
+all the world to see, a reassuring shop window full of frank
+shortcomings. Besides, I never can resist triumphant vitality. Delancey
+is overflowing with joie de vivre, with curiosity, with a certainty of
+imminent adventure. If you say to him, "I saw a policeman," his face
+lights up and so it would if you said "I saw a dog," or a cat, or a
+donkey-cart. To him policemen and dogs and cats and donkey-carts are
+always just about to do something dramatic or absurd or unexpected. Nor
+is he discouraged by unfailing regularity in their behaviour. Faith is
+"the evidence of things not seen."
+
+And then, too, he is so very welcoming. Not, of course, that he makes
+you feel you are the only person in the world because a world with only
+one other person in it would be inconceivably horrible to him, but he
+does make you quite sure that he is most frightfully glad to see
+you--all the gladder because it is such a surprise. Delancey always
+makes a point of being surprised. Also, though he is invariably in a
+hurry--being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life--he as
+invariably turns round and walks with you, in your direction, to
+convince himself that having met you in Jermyn Street is an altogether
+unexpected and delightful adventure. And he never feels, as I always do,
+that a five minutes' conversation is a stupid, embarrassing thing, too
+long for mere civility and too short for anything else. The five minutes
+are filled to the brim and off he rushes again, leaving me just a little
+more tired and leisurely from the contact. Delancey is the life and soul
+of a party--or perhaps I should say the life and body. He likes eating
+and drinking and talking to women and talking to men and smoking and
+telling a story. And if he does address his neighbour a little as if she
+were a meeting at a bye-election, open air, he at any rate never
+addresses her as if she were a duty and no one had ever wanted to kiss
+her.
+
+To Delancey all women have had lovers and husbands and children and
+religious conversions and railway accidents. Old maids and clergymen's
+wives adore him.
+
+I don't know what it was that made him write originally. Perhaps it was
+his name--Delancey Woburn sounds like the author--or the hero--of a
+serial. Or it may have been that his exuberant desire for
+self-expression had burst through the four walls of practical
+professions. He had, I believe, considered the stage and the church.
+Journalism would have seemed to me the obvious outlet but he preferred
+literature. "Creation is such _fun_," he would explain, beaming. And, of
+course, he was tremendously successful. Delancey was designed on a
+pattern of success.
+
+That was one of the obvious defects I was talking about. Delancey has
+missed his failures. He has fought and been defeated but he has never
+longed and been frustrated. In his case, romance is realism. He has only
+known happy endings.
+
+Naturally he is not an interesting writer. How could he be? And,
+naturally, he is a successful one. How could he help it? Delancey writes
+for magazines in England and America. I, myself, never read magazines,
+but occasionally he sends me one and every twenty stories (I think it is
+twenty) become a book. The English ones were about scapegraces and
+irresistible ne'er-do-wells, ancestral homes with frayed carpets and
+faded hangings in which penniless woman-haters (the last of a noble
+line) sit and brood, living alone with equally gruff, woman-hating
+family retainers. Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer,
+and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests of
+their own ultimate frustration.
+
+But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn't a
+market for ne'er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and
+dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as
+dangerous. No, America must have her special line and no one better than
+Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of
+Wall Street and serve at the right temperature.
+
+He wasn't proud of his writing--or, rather, he wasn't proud of it with
+every one. In his heart of hearts, what he wanted was not the applause
+of the public, but the faith of a coterie, to be a martyr, misunderstood
+by the many, worshipped by the few. A Bloomsbury hero, a Chelsea King!
+"We confess that as a writer Mr. Delancey Woburn is altogether too
+rarefied for our taste. His work is far too impregnated by the stamp of
+a tiny clique of rather self-conscious superintellectuals. Reading his
+books, we feel as if we had suddenly entered a room full of people who
+know one another very well. In other words, we feel out of it."
+
+What would not Delancey have given for a review that began like that!
+Instead of which the best that he could hope for in "shorter notices"
+would be an announcement that "Mr. Woburn's many admirers will no doubt
+find his last book eminently to their taste. He provides a lavish supply
+of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work."
+
+Poor Delancey, his stories _did_ sell so well! And there was his flat in
+Grafton Street with the beautiful new taffetas curtains and the cigars
+that had just arrived from Havana, with his own initials on.
+
+So from week to week he put off becoming an artist and one year (after a
+four-month love affair and two lacquer cabinets) he made a lecture tour
+in America.
+
+"Was it a success?" I asked wearily (Delancey's success is always such a
+terribly foregone conclusion).
+
+"Tremendous," he beamed. "I was careful to be a little dull because then
+they think they're learning something." But he was out of love, the flat
+was overcrowded, money continued to pour in and he knew terribly well
+that he was not making a contribution to contemporary literature.
+
+He had always assured me at intervals that some day he would write his
+"real book" but I think it was after his tour in America that the dream
+became a project. He burst in to tell me about it. Delancey always
+begins things with a sudden noisy rush.
+
+"Charlotte," he said, "I have made up my mind."
+
+"It sounds very momentous," I teased. He decided years ago that I was
+grave, fastidious, whimsical, aloof and (I suspect) a little faded. I
+have long given up fighting my own battle (to be known) because I
+realise that Delancey never revises the passports given to old ideas.
+There is always, to him, something a little bit sacred about the
+accepted. "I can't go on with it any longer," he explained.
+
+"Go on with what?"
+
+"My damned stories."
+
+"How ungrateful you are," I murmured, thinking of the lacquer cabinets,
+"you have a market, you can command a price. Each of your love affairs
+is more magnificently studded with flowers than the last----"
+
+"Be quiet," he said. "I came to you because I knew that you would
+understand."
+
+"You are trying to blackmail me."
+
+"Do be serious," he pleaded. "I am going to give all that up. I have
+determined to settle down and dedicate myself entirely to my book."
+
+"But," I expostulated, "have you thought of the yearning _Saturday
+Evening Post_, of the deserted _Strand_?"
+
+"I have thought of everything," he said, "I shall be sacrificing 5,000
+pounds a year, but what is 5,000 pounds a year?"
+
+I thought of the taffetas curtains and the cigars, but I answered quite
+truthfully.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You see, Charlotte," he dropped the noble for the confidential, "I have
+got things to say, things that are vital to me. I couldn't put them in
+my other work. How could I? It would have seemed--you will think me
+ridiculous--a kind of prostitution."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"But they were clamouring for expression all the time. And I have kept
+them down till I couldn't keep them down any longer. Of course, I know
+my book won't be a success--a popular success, I mean--but it won't have
+been written for the multitude but for the few--the people who really
+care, who really understand. It may be even thought," there was
+exultation in his voice, "dull."
+
+"Well," I said, "I think it is very brave of you--and quite right. Truly
+I do."
+
+"I think I shall take a tiny cottage in a fishing village in
+Devonshire," Delancey was as usual seeing things pictorially--bare
+white-washed walls, blue and white linen curtains and a pot of wall
+flowers.
+
+A week later he came to see me again.
+
+"When are you off to Devonshire?" I asked.
+
+"I have decided to stay here," he answered, "there is a roar of life in
+London, a vibrating pulse, a muffled thunder." I began to be afraid that
+Delancey's book would be very bad indeed. It was, it appeared, to be a
+novel. "Not exactly a novel," he explained, "a large canvas with figures
+moving on a back-ground of world conditions." I thought of "War and
+Peace" and was silent. It doesn't matter being silent with Delancey
+because he doesn't notice it.
+
+"I want," he said, "to picture the very earth in the agonies of labour
+giving birth to a new world." Later, the theme was (to my secret relief)
+narrowed down to England.
+
+"I have changed my motif a little," he said. "I simply want to portray
+the quicksilver of after-war conditions--England in transition." At this
+time Delancey seemed to me the least little tiny bit depressed. The
+income he was sacrificing rose (in his conversation) from 5,000 to 7,000
+pounds. He dined out less, avoided his club and Christie's. Also, he
+kept out of love. For ten years, Delancey had always been in love.
+Managed by him, it was a delightful state, ably presided over by head
+waiters and florists. It made, he once explained to me, all the
+difference to walking into a room.
+
+But everything was changed now. The masterpiece was a jealous god.
+Jealous and, I sometimes thought, apt to be a little tiresome. It had to
+be referred to so very deferentially, with such carefully serious
+respect. Also, it cast a shadow of gravity over Delancey--Delancey who
+was never meant to be a high priest, but rather a young man in white
+flannels, with a cigarette in his mouth, punting a young girl with a red
+sunshade--like an illustration to one of his own stories.
+
+Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely
+admit it) extremely exhausting. But never have my patience and endurance
+been more severely tested than during the year of Delancey's
+masterpiece. He finally decided that in the foreground, there was to be
+the clash of two human souls and in the background, the collision of two
+worlds--the old (pre-War) and the new. In fact, a partie carr�e of
+conflicts.
+
+"You with your love of form," he explained to me, "will appreciate the
+care I have given to the structure. It is," he added, "difficult to
+mould vast masses of material."
+
+As the months went by I began to be horribly afraid that Delancey's
+novel would be very, very long indeed. And even if nobody read it
+through, not even a reviewer, I should have to without skipping a word
+or a comma.
+
+"The sentences," Delancey told me, "are rather long. I find the
+semicolon very useful for cumulative effects." A vast array of words
+policed by semi-colons. I felt a little dizzy. Would they be able to
+keep order?
+
+"Of course," he continued, "the interest is very largely psychological,
+but I regard the book mainly as a document--a social document. The
+fiction of to-day is the history of to-morrow."
+
+This seemed conclusive. The book could not have less than 700 pages. A
+social document with psychological interest and a double conflict. Why,
+it would be short at that. And then, one day, when Delancey's book had
+become to me a form of eternity, he arrived, breathless with excitement.
+
+"To all intents and purposes, it's finished," he gasped.
+
+"Thank God," I murmured faintly.
+
+"It will be an awful loss to me," he stated mournfully.
+
+"It isn't dead yet," I said with feeble jocularity.
+
+"It is sad to see your children leave you. To watch them step out into a
+cold, inhospitable world," he went on.
+
+"A warm, welcoming world," I amended dishonestly. "You haven't told me
+what it is called yet."
+
+"It isn't called anything. I want you to be its god-mother, Charlotte.
+What about 'Whither'?"
+
+"Too like a pamphlet," I was glad to be on firm ground again.
+
+"I thought about 'Fate's Laboratory,' but it isn't very rhythmical, is
+it?"
+
+"Not very," I agreed.
+
+"The question mark after the 'Whither' would look nice on the cover," he
+reflected regretfully.
+
+I brightened. This was the old Delancey. The Delancey of the _Saturday
+Evening Post_ and the _Strand_, of the taffetas curtains and the cottage
+in Devonshire. By my sudden glow of gladness I realised how much I had
+missed him. But I couldn't say, "Dear, _dear_ Delancey, please be your
+old self and never, never, whatever you do, write another 'good' book,"
+so I confessed that a question mark _would_ look very nice, but that I
+still thought that "Whither" sounded rather like a religious tract.
+
+"Well, we must think it over," he said.
+
+A week later, he announced to me in a tone which indicated clearly that
+my opinion was only wanted if it was approval, "I have decided to call
+my book 'Transition.'"
+
+"I always like single word titles," I said.
+
+"No one will read it," he said. "One bares one's soul to the public and
+they throw stones at it. But at any rate, now I can hold my head high."
+
+I didn't laugh, but it was the effort of a lifetime. Dear Delancey was
+so very absurd as a self-made martyr. It was somehow impossible for him
+to give an impression of having been persecuted for righteousness'
+sake. His shiny, rosy face had never looked rounder, his trousers had
+never been more perfect or his shoes more polished. And there were still
+the same little outbursts of childish prosperity, his watch, his
+tie-pin, his links were all redolent of a vitality that had ever been
+just the least little bit blatant.
+
+"Delancey," I said, "I want you to have just the sort of success you
+want for yourself."
+
+"Thank you," he said, wondering if I knew what I was talking about.
+
+And then, one day, a proof copy of Delancey's book arrived. I looked at
+the paper cover. It was bright orange with "Transition" slanting upwards
+in immense black letters. "Very arresting," I could hear the publisher
+saying. Gingerly I unwrapped it. Underneath, it was sober black linen,
+with bright blue lettering still on the cross. I sat with it in my
+hands, feeling limp and will-less. But, at last, I pulled myself
+together. I read the dedication, "To those who died." I saw that there
+were 600 pages, big pages crowded with words. And then, saying to
+myself, "It is no good putting it off," I began to read. Delancey's book
+was certainly not at all like his stories. It was very nearly rather a
+good book and it was quite extraordinarily dull. The social structure
+played a r�le of deadly relentless magnitude. It began (before the War)
+as an immense iron scaffolding and ended sprawling in the foreground,
+torn up by the roots. In the clutches of this gigantic monster, the two
+chief characters not unnaturally reduced by comparison with their
+surroundings to the proportion of pygmies in their turn, worked from
+happiness to the self-conscious misery which is the only true state of
+grace.
+
+"I have chosen a man and a woman, neither of them in any way
+exceptional," wrote Delancey in the preface and though this was
+undoubtedly so, they seemed to me truer to fiction than to life. No, the
+merits of the book had nothing to do with the characters, they lay in
+the descriptions of the English countryside, of village life, of London
+traffic, of the Armistice, of an Albert Hall meeting. There was a close
+observation of detail and that pictorial sense which is Delancey's one
+gift and which he relentlessly suppressed whenever he could,
+nevertheless forced its way out here and there. The canvas seemed to me
+immense. Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and
+philistines, "good" women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious
+objectors jostled one another in the m�l�e. Bloomsbury, Westminster,
+Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and
+night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But,
+unlike Delancey's other stories, the soldiers had no V.C.'s and the
+workers didn't touch their caps. My eyes ached and my brain tired as I
+read on, but I forced myself forward with the thought that no one else
+in the world would reach the end.
+
+Then the reviews began. I felt a little nervous but one seemed more
+glowing than the last. Finally, a notice appeared two columns long
+entitled "A Social Document" which ended with the words, "We venture to
+predict that this book will be read 100 years hence as a truer picture
+of the England of to-day than most of the histories that are being
+written." Delancey was frightfully pleased, naturally. With child-like
+joy he showed me cuttings from intellectual literary papers. His book
+was even mentioned in a leading article and formed the topic of a
+sermon.
+
+"Think of reaching a pulpit," he exclaimed exultantly. "Of course, I
+know I've lost my old public but I've found my soul."
+
+"People talk to me of their work now," he told me another time; "in old
+days, they never thought me one of themselves. I was a story teller, not
+an artist."
+
+And then it was that an extraordinary thing happened--"Transition" began
+to sell. It was quoted and talked about until the snowball of fame,
+steadily gathering momentum, started rolling down-hill to the general
+public. The sales went up and up and up. The circulation reached
+100,000 and soon after, 150,000. Why people bought it and whether they
+read it, I don't know, but Sydney (the heroine) and Mark Allison (the
+hero) became household words and soon they were used as generic terms--a
+Sydney, or an Allison, without so much as an inverted comma!
+
+Delancey hardly ever came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided
+state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be
+able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select
+Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to
+sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot
+and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000
+pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was
+making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect
+seemed more firmly closed than ever?
+
+At this time, Delancey avoided me, but I heard that "Transition" was to
+be dramatised and that the film rights had been bought. How the endless
+chaotic mass, loosely held together by semi-colons, was to be moulded
+into a drama or a movie was quite beyond my imagination, but evidently
+some enterprising people had decided to call their play "Transition."
+"Delancey must," I reflected, "be getting very rich indeed." But still
+he didn't come near me, until one day I sent for him. He looked, I
+thought, just a tiny bit care-worn. The all conquering light had gone
+out of his eye. His boots were a little dusty and he wore no tie-pin. He
+had, I suppose, become rich beyond the symptoms of prosperity.
+
+"Well," I smiled at him to reassure him.
+
+"It has all been very surprising, hasn't it?" he said with an
+embarrassed expression.
+
+I didn't know whether to say "yes" or "no," that I was glad or that I
+was sorry.
+
+"But it doesn't alter the quality of your book," I consoled him.
+
+He brightened, "No," he said, "it doesn't; I am glad you said that."
+
+We talked about other things, music and old furniture and people. He
+had, he said, thought of buying a house in Chelsea. It was, I realised,
+not exactly the entry he had planned but I encouraged the idea. There
+was, I explained, nothing like the Thames.
+
+And so we rambled on till he took his leave. But five minutes after his
+departure I heard the bell ring. Delancey burst back into the room,
+
+"I forgot to tell you," he said, "that 185,000 copies of 'Transition'
+have sold."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+A MOTOR
+
+[_To ALICE LONGWORTH_]
+
+
+There is a special quality about a December sunset. The ruffles of red
+gold gradually untightening, the congested mauve islands on a
+transparent sea of green, the ultimate luminous primrose dissolving into
+violet powder and then the cold biting night lit up by strange patches
+of colour that have somehow been forgotten in the sky.
+
+Eve was walking home, her quick, defiant movements challenging the
+evening, her head bent slightly forward, her chin almost touching her
+muff, while her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed and her lithe figure
+seemed almost to be cutting through the icy air.
+
+"This is happiness," she thought exultantly, "this bitter winter
+stimulus--I feel so light--as if my heart and mind were empty--only my
+body is quivering with life--the pure life of physical fitness. Why
+think, or feel, or look forward?" She doubled her pace until her feet
+seemed to be skimming the road. "I feel like a duck and drake," she
+laughed to herself. "Nothing matters, nothing, while there is still
+frost in the world."
+
+And then she saw a little motor waiting on the other side of the road.
+She stopped dead and her heart stopped with her.
+
+"There is no reason why it should be his. Hundreds of people have motors
+like that."
+
+Resolutely she took a step forward. "I can't see from here, and I won't
+go and look," she added as she crossed over.
+
+And then, shutting her eyes:
+
+"Jerry," she said to herself, trying to kill his ghost with his name.
+
+The evening air had become damp and penetrating. It made her throat feel
+sore and she choked a little as she breathed it.
+
+Gingerly she approached the motor to make sure. What an absurd phrase!
+Why, a leap of her heart would have announced its presence, even had her
+eyes been shut.
+
+She knew its every detail, the sound the gears made changing, the feel
+of the seat, the way the hood went up. And, above all, the little clock,
+ticking its warning by day, regular and relentless, while at night its
+bright prying eyes reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget.
+"It is my conscience," she would say, "and fate and mortality. It
+symbolises all the limitations of life. It is the frontier to
+happiness, the defeat of peace."
+
+"Go on," he had said, "and you will end by forgetting it."
+
+It was what he had called her habit of talking things "away."
+
+How often she had slipped into his motor after him, sliding along the
+shiny leather, nestling happily against him, explaining that there was
+no draught, that the rain was not coming in, that her feet were as warm
+as toast. How often he had steered slowly with one hand, while her
+fingers crept into the palm of the other. And then he had turned off the
+engine and they had sat there together silent and alone, cut off from
+the world. How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would caress
+it with her hand, stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him
+looking at her, she would say, "I think my purse must have fallen behind
+the seat." It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an
+adventure, an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of
+existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better
+kingdom than a room; for a room is full of paraphernalia and
+impedimenta, with books and photographs, and the envelopes of letters to
+remind you of people and things that you want to forget. After all she
+could not sweep her house clear of her life, empty it of the necessary
+and the superfluous of her ties and her duties and her responsibilities.
+
+But his motor--his little gasping uncomfortable motor--that was really
+and truly hers, because it was his. Here was her throne and his altar.
+
+No wonder she sometimes stroked it a little, when it was too dark for
+him to ask her what she was doing.
+
+And now, now some one else crept in after him, slid towards him on the
+shiny leather, murmured that her feet were as warm as toast, that there
+was no draught, and of course the rain didn't come in....
+
+Or did she say, "Do you think there is something the matter with your
+motor to-day? It seems a little asthmatic?"
+
+Eve looked at the house. She could see brightness shining behind the
+curtains. She could imagine a glowing fire and a faint smell of warm
+roses. Who was the woman? What were they doing? Sitting on either side
+of the fireplace drowsily intimate, smiling a little perhaps and hardly
+talking, conscious only of the cold outside and the warm room and one
+another....
+
+Eve shivered. Almost unconsciously she fingered the mud guard. "A room
+is a horrible unprivate thing," she said. "People walk in and out of it,
+any one, and there are books and photographs and letters. It is a
+market place, not a sanctuary,--whereas you...." She looked at the
+little motor. It was too dark to see anything, but every line of it was
+branded on her heart.
+
+"No one will ever love you as I did," she said to it and slowly,
+wearily, dragging one foot after another, she walked away into the cold
+raw night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Nothing in the world like winter air to make you feel fit," Bob said to
+himself as he swung himself along the road at a tremendous pace.
+
+"Jove, what a sunset!" he added, looking up at the red gold ruffles
+slowly untightening. He reflected that there is nothing in the world
+like health. Live cleanly and the high thinking will look after
+itself--or at least won't matter. Physical condition, there's nothing
+like it. Love and that sort of thing all very well in its way, but a
+cold bath in the morning and plenty of exercise.... He began to whistle,
+and then--because he did feel most frightfully well--to run.
+
+"Run a mile without being out of breath," he thought complacently, and
+then--because he hadn't meant to--("wasn't even thinking of her," he
+grumbled to Providence)--he found himself outside her door. And in the
+road there was a motor, a little coral coloured motor. He looked at it
+in dismay and then he looked at the house. He saw it was lit up and he
+imagined the room he knew so well. The crimson damask curtains and the
+creamy walls, the glowing fire and the red roses, the roses he had sent
+for her. Probably she would be sitting on that white fur rug on the
+floor, her arms clasped round her knees, her red hair as bright as the
+red hot coals, her dark eyes dreamy and half closed.
+
+"Damn him, I wonder who he is," and he started examining the motor.
+
+"It's not very new," he thought, "the varnish is all off and those shiny
+leather seats are damned cold and slippery, draughty too, I should say;
+hood doesn't close properly. Must let in the rain like a leaking boat."
+
+He put his hand on the mud guard. "Bent," he said. He felt a little
+cheered. But then, looking at the glowing house, he grew disconsolate
+again.
+
+"Wonder what they're doing," he grumbled to himself. "Jabbering away,
+I'll be bound. Never was much of a hand at talking myself. Wonder who
+the deuce he is."
+
+And then he looked contemptuously at the little motor.
+
+"Damned if I couldn't do her better than that," he said. "God, how cold
+it is."
+
+Irresolutely he moved away. Then he began to run, but the raw air
+caught his throat and he felt out of breath.
+
+"Not as young as I was," he thought as he walked away into the damp
+night.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE MASTERPIECE
+
+[_To HAROLD CHILD_]
+
+
+He sat in front of his writing-table with a blank sheet of paper in
+front of him--a creamy, virginal sheet, inviting and elusive. "A few
+black smudges and the whole of life might be there," he thought,
+"concentrated but limited with four corners and no boundaries." He
+thought of the untouched whiteness of the paper violated by a
+masterpiece--or a love letter. He didn't want to think of love letters.
+He had written such hundreds, and for four years now they had all been
+to the same person. His fidelity had been due, he supposed, to the fact
+that to him she was almost more an idea than an individual, a legend
+that he had created. She was his faith, his religion, his shrine. She
+was on a pedestal from which she shed a pale gold light--silvery
+gold--of serenity won through suffering. He saw her very seldom, but
+when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as
+if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give
+him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the
+sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that
+gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend had a soul.
+
+But to-day he didn't want to think of her. He wanted to work. The word
+made him smile a little. There had been a time when ideas had seized
+hold of him and driven him recklessly wherever they wanted him to go.
+Then he had made form his fetish and it had become his prison. Now he
+had lost both his abandon and his rigidity and with each, a certain
+driving force had been taken away from him. He would sit in front of his
+table and remember that all the masterpieces of the world are contained
+in the alphabet and it would prevent him from writing. And then he would
+think of her and that would mean writing to her or writing for her. In a
+sense, everything he wrote was "To her." He remembered the first time
+that he had dared to write her a letter without a beginning. His pen had
+trembled in his hand. And yet it is the way all borderland letters
+begin, whether the frontier is between acquaintanceship and friendship,
+or between friendship and love. For there are moments in life when if
+you can't say "My own Blessed," you can say nothing--omission is the
+substitute for the absolute. Only with her, formality was a flavouring
+of intimacy, a curious fragrance like a faint clinging of unseen
+pot-pourri. And so, for a long time after he had sent her his first
+endless, beginningless out-pouring, her letters had begun, "Dear
+Mr. ----" and had ended very tidily, with a signature at the bottom of a
+page.
+
+He had dedicated his first novel to her,--"To Mrs. ----" The dedication
+had pleased him. It was so immensely full of reserve and respect and the
+possibility of other things. A little, locked box of a dedication. It
+had pleased her, too. "It is a lovely dedication," she had said with
+that smile she had, which was like a peeping glimmer of sunshine on a
+grey day.
+
+He had always gone on dedicating his books to her. His collection of
+poems had been called "To Jane"--which was not her name, but his name
+for her--a deep, clear name, resolute and courageous, calm and direct
+and sure. A still name. He wondered if any one had ever given to another
+human being as much as he had given her. Or perhaps it was no longer a
+question of giving. Everything came from her and belonged to her. She
+was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and
+his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of
+things, giving a certain reality to the world simply by being in it.
+
+He hardly ever saw her. He couldn't bring himself to force his way
+through the labyrinthine tangle of circumstances that surrounded her. It
+was as if by doing so, he could only reach her mud-spattered and chipped
+and bedraggled, an unworthy, battered object. And so he preferred her to
+live in his heart, warming and watering his imagination, glowing in
+cold, dark places, gilding the tips of his fancies, fertilising his
+soul. He hardly wanted her outside in the physical world. But when she
+was with him, he felt a deep serenity, an absolute harmony of life.
+Questions and questionings seemed remote and frivolous, the useless
+paraphernalia of empty lives. There came, with her, a fullness, a sense
+of completion.
+
+He sat and thought of her and gradually he shut his eyes and imagined
+her coming into the room. Her movements would be very slow and
+deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she
+were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a
+few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. Slowly she would pull
+off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as
+she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he
+would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap
+again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another--a
+faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her
+exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she
+would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair,
+a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. She
+always gave him a feeling of gold and silver and luminous whiteness, a
+steady radiance that illuminated without blinding. And perhaps she would
+sink her head back into a cushion and shut her eyes with a little
+grateful sigh to these moments of respite, and he would watch her, proud
+beyond measure to be able to give her these little patches of peace. And
+between them there would be a fullness of silence. Sometimes she would
+talk a little with a low, clear, echoless voice like a note without a
+pedal. A still voice--monotonous, people called it--with almost
+imperceptible modulations which seemed gradually deeply significant as
+your ear became attuned to them, like a dim room in which you are able
+to see everything when your eye is accustomed to the light.
+
+It was one of the altogether satisfying things about her, this abundant
+treasure of intimacy which could not be guessed at or even suspected by
+the ordinary passer-by. "That is the woman with the lovely hair? I never
+know what to talk to her about," he had heard people say, and
+exultantly, reverently, he had pressed her image to his heart. She never
+talked much. Seeing her in imagination to-day, he saw her leaning back,
+everything about her drooping and relaxed, her arms, her hands, her
+feet--they had all abdicated--only from the depths of her infinite
+tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of
+this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and
+he would answer--rather shortly--or she would make a statement which he
+would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between
+them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations and
+amplifications had become impossible.
+
+And she would get up slowly, giving herself a little shake to wake
+herself up into reality while he gave her her hat, her hat-pins, her
+veil, her gloves, her bag, one by one, and taking her hands, he would
+kiss them first on the backs and then on the palms and then give them
+too back to her.
+
+And she would say, "Thank you," and look slowly all round the room, as
+she always did, wanting to take it away with her without one detail
+missing, for it was to this room that her soul retreated in its moments
+of unbearable loneliness.
+
+With difficulty, she would make her way to the door and rather
+hurriedly, because she knew it was a weakness--she who was so deliberate
+and so strong--she would say, "Write to me," and then she would open and
+shut the door herself because she liked to take away the picture of him
+standing in the middle of his sanctuary--her sanctuary....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He opened his eyes. The room was so full of her that he took a deep
+breath, breathing the certainty of her into his soul. And he seemed to
+hear the words, "Write to me." He smiled very tenderly. He loved her to
+have this one little wish--she was so far above and beyond concrete
+manifestations--she who had such a deep contempt for imprisoning forms.
+And he remembered her once looking at a cheque and saying, "The figures,
+after all, are a limitation." And suddenly in front of him he saw the
+blank sheet of paper. "She shall have the most wonderful love-letter
+ever written by man to woman," he said to himself and at the very bottom
+of the page, he put one initial. Then very tenderly he folded it up and
+addressed it, remembering that it was thus that his first novel had been
+dedicated--"To Mrs. ----." "The difference is," he thought, "that this is
+a masterpiece."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+TEA TIME
+
+[_To SYLVESTER GATES_]
+
+
+She lay on a sofa covered with white marabou, her head sunk deep into a
+billowy morass of lace-coloured satin and lace-coloured lace. She could
+see her pointed toes emerging and her arm dangling over the edge as if
+she had forgotten it. On her finger was a huge emerald ring, a splotch
+of cr�me de menthe spilt on the whiteness of her hand. She felt
+entrenched and anchored in an altogether strong position, so fixed that
+all advances would have to be made to her. This gave to her voice and to
+her gestures an indolent melodious security.
+
+As the door opened she turned her eyes round slowly, suppressing all
+eagerness.
+
+"Mortimer!" She wondered if disappointment could be as easily controlled
+as joy. "How nice of you to come and see me!"
+
+"Are you glad--really?" He was kissing her hand with an unnecessary
+mixture of shyness and intensity.
+
+"How intolerably literal people in love are," she thought petulantly;
+"always forcing significance into everything."
+
+"Of course," she said, smiling lazily.
+
+"It is good of you to let me come like this." How she hated his
+humility, but--"I like you to," she murmured, automatically kind.
+
+"How lovely you look! Lovelier than ever before--as lovely as ever
+before." And then, "I love you."
+
+"Do you think so?" She seemed amused and sceptical.
+
+"Do you doubt it?" He clutched her wrist.
+
+"Not if you put it like that."
+
+"You are laughing at me," he recognised sadly.
+
+"Forgive me." She put her hand on his, lightly, caressingly, her voice
+gentle and tender.
+
+"But you do know it, don't you?" He was very insistent.
+
+("Does he think that I am blind and deaf and that no one has ever loved
+me before?" she wondered irritably.)
+
+"I think you think so," she prevaricated.
+
+"I know," he was firm. "I shall love you always."
+
+"Nonsense." She was tart with realism. "Why do you fly in the face of
+all experience with meaningless generalisations?"
+
+"I have never said it before."
+
+"Then how can you know?"
+
+He hated her barrister mood.
+
+"Elaine, aren't you glad I love you?"
+
+"Of course." She closed her eyes wearily. They talked of other things
+and she remembered how intelligent he was. It had been--during these
+last months--very easy to forget. But though her interest was
+concentrated, his attention was on other things.
+
+"Elaine," he blurted, "are you going to the country to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"When will you know?"
+
+"I have no idea!"
+
+"But when shall I see you again?"
+
+"I can't tell."
+
+"Elaine, please do put me out of my misery."
+
+"Very well then--I shan't see you again this week."
+
+"Elaine!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Please."
+
+"Please what?"
+
+"I _am_ sorry I bothered you; don't punish me. I promise not to ask any
+more questions, but please let me know when you come back. Even if you
+only ring me up on the telephone I shall have heard your voice!"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You're not angry with me, are you?"
+
+"Why should I be?"
+
+"I thought perhaps you were."
+
+There was a pause. "Is there anything amusing about being loved?" she
+thought; "what patient women the great coquettes of the world must have
+been! How I wish I were a crisp intelligent old maid, with a talent
+perhaps for gardening or books on the Renaissance!"
+
+"How tired you look!" He had taken her hand and was pressing it with
+funny little jerky grasps. "I wish you belonged to me; I wouldn't let
+you spend yourself on every Tom, Dick and Harry."
+
+"It is so difficult to know," she murmured, "who is Tom, who is Dick, or
+who is Harry!"
+
+"When I think of the way your divine sympathy is imposed upon--the way
+your friends take advantage of you!"
+
+"But I like being taken advantage of."
+
+"People's selfishness makes me sick. Look at your white face and your
+drooping eyelids, and your tired little smiles."
+
+"I am sorry."
+
+"Sorry! Good God! My beloved, do take care of yourself, please. Promise
+me not to see any one after I leave; go to bed and pull the blinds."
+
+"But I am expecting Bill."
+
+"Bill will be all the better for not getting what he wants for once."
+
+"But supposing he doesn't want it?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+The door opened.
+
+"Bill!" She put out her left hand, all her features lit up with a quiet
+luminous radiance. His eyes were smiling, but his mouth was grave.
+
+"Elaine!" He said it as if it were a very significant remark, and,
+though he hadn't meant to, he caressed her name with his voice.
+
+"Mortimer thinks I ought to go to bed and send you away."
+
+"But you won't?"
+
+"Probably not." She was bubbling over with gaiety. "I am very
+weak-minded."
+
+The two men were not looking at one another, but currents of hostility
+flowed between them. Bill had not fought for Elaine's love; it had come
+to him with a strange inevitability. He had no fear of losing it and no
+particular desire to keep it, but the thought that you possess something
+that some one else passionately covets is always exhilarating. He would
+never have admitted it--he could never have admitted it, but she was to
+him like an object dangled on a watch chain--not obtrusively displayed
+but a possession recognised by everybody and taken for granted by him.
+Only he never seemed bored because he was never tired of mobilising his
+own charms. And in herself, she delighted him--it was only in her
+relations with him that she got on his nerves. He loved to see her with
+other men exercising the divine arts of her irresistibility, her every
+smile, her every gesture, the intonations of her voice, the turn of her
+head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her
+intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the
+masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a
+coquette--jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull--she tired
+him to death.
+
+"Well, I must be going." Mortimer spoke doubtfully. There was a pause.
+Then Elaine pulled herself together.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have so much to do."
+
+"It was so nice of you to come and see me."
+
+"It was so nice of you to let me come. Please remember your promise to
+let me know when you come back."
+
+"Of course." He was gone.
+
+Wearily she shut her eyes. "Do you remember the time when Mortimer was
+charming?"
+
+"Indeed I do; he was quite delightful till he fell in love with you. He
+is really a warning against loving."
+
+"You hardly heed it, do you?" Her voice was very bitter. How he hated
+the entry of the acidulated tragic into all their talks.
+
+"Perhaps not." He felt guilty, knowing how much he was hurting her.
+"After all you cannot ask me to model myself on the man who bores you
+most in the world."
+
+She smiled. "What a good reason for not loving me!"
+
+"The best!" He was smiling his enchanting, flattering smile at her--the
+smile that always seemed to draw you into the Holy of Holies of his
+confidence.
+
+"I may be going away to-morrow," she said.
+
+"May you?"
+
+"But I shall be back on Thursday. Shall we dine together that night?"
+
+"I am dining with a Russian friend of mine who is passing through
+London."
+
+"Friday, then?"
+
+"Friday I am going to the country for the week-end."
+
+"Then it will have to be Monday."
+
+"Yes, I am afraid so."
+
+"Afraid that you will have to dine with me?"
+
+"How civil you are!"
+
+There was a pause. She wished she could keep all the acid out of her
+voice. He thought how tiresome women were, always wanting to know just
+what you were going to do.
+
+"Bill," she said, holding out her hand, which he took rather
+perfunctorily. He felt like a dog that knows exactly which trick follows
+what word of command, but as, from force of habit, he invariably became
+lover-like when he was absent-minded, he stroked her arm with a
+significant caressing gesture that filled her with joy.
+
+"Are you glad I love you?" she murmured.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"There is an intelligent woman," he thought, "who has had hundreds of
+men in love with her, making a demand for verbal assurances that can't
+possibly add anything to her peace of mind. Either they are true and
+superfluous, or they are false and transparently unconvincing."
+
+"Bill," she said, reading his thoughts, "you can't understand my wanting
+mere words, can you?"
+
+"No," he said, "not you, who know so exactly what they mean."
+
+"Nevertheless, they are sometimes vaguely comforting and reassuring--a
+sort of local an�sthetic." He loved her insight, her curious layers of
+detachment.
+
+"Bill," she murmured, "I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+"Not since two this morning."
+
+"I don't count a ball; besides I was too tired to stop dancing."
+
+"You danced like an angel and your eyes were shining with ecstasy,
+lighting hopes all round, though of course I knew you didn't know your
+partner from the parquet--if he happened to be as good as the floor."
+
+"You love watching me, don't you? much better than seeing me." How he
+wished she weren't always right.
+
+"Remember what a wonderful drama you are, Elaine."
+
+"A drama in which you have played lead. But you only liked the first
+act--the Comedy Act, and you won't even enjoy the curtain as much as you
+think, because always there will be the nasty certainty of its some day
+going up again, and then you won't even be in the wings."
+
+How diabolically clear-sighted she was!
+
+"Bill, dearest," she held out her hand, "you are reaching the moment
+when you long to be the third person. You want a little rest. You have
+come to the point in the life of every lover when he prefers the husband
+to the wife."
+
+But this was more than he could stand. A horrible shadow was being cast
+over his future, romance was shrinking before his eyes. Frightened, he
+bent down and kissed her. "Darling," he murmured, nestling his face in
+her neck, "what nonsense you talk."
+
+Love, passion, romance, fidelity--all were vindicated by this deliberate
+act.
+
+Her doubts, her certainties, subsided, vanished--hypnotised with
+happiness. "I was teasing," she lied.
+
+"I must go," he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not just this moment, please; five more minutes."
+
+"It will be just as difficult then."
+
+"But I shall have had five more minutes."
+
+"How practical you are!"
+
+He stayed.
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+"Do."
+
+"And I shall try and be back in time for tea Thursday, then I shall see
+you, in spite of your stupid Russian."
+
+"If I can get away."
+
+"Can't you bring him to dine with me?"
+
+"I'm afraid not; he has asked some one else."
+
+"Shall I have some forms printed with 'I miss you, bless you,' for you
+to sign and send me each day."
+
+"Goose!"
+
+"Well, at any rate, I shall have you properly on Monday."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And please make a great effort about Thursday."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She drew him down to her, holding his face in her hands.
+
+"It is silly to love at my time of life," she said; "I am too young. It
+is like wearing a lovely new dress to climb mountains in."
+
+"You will always be young," he said; "you are eternal."
+
+It was his considered view; he wished she weren't. Kissing her a little
+absently he walked to the door; then because he had always done so, he
+walked back.
+
+"Bless you," he said. It was perfunctory and final. The shutting of the
+door turned out the light in her eyes.
+
+"How tired I am!" she thought, and then--"Tuesday, Wednesday,
+Thursday--Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE END
+
+
+He knew that nothing could ever possibly happen to him again and so he
+sat on his sofa waiting--for death, he supposed, having excluded every
+other possibility. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to do anything,
+to eat or drink or feel or think--above all, he didn't want to move. He
+had shut his eyes trying to shut out the room. Every bit of it was
+saturated in her, everything had been consecrated--contaminated, it
+seemed to him now--by her touch. There wasn't a patch of carpet or
+chintz that didn't belong to her intimately and exclusively. Every
+object in the room seemed to pose her and add to the interminable
+picture gallery of his memory. He opened his eyes and saw an uncut
+pencil. Here, at any rate, was something new and independent--neutral
+territory, unsharpened it was an unloaded pistol and he wanted to shoot.
+At her? He was bound to miss. His bitterness was no medium through which
+to recapture her magic and without it he would merely be forcing a lay
+figure to perform vulgar and meaningless antics. And if he tore her to
+bits, it would be an indictment of himself, not of his gentlemanliness,
+that had long ceased to mean anything to him--but of his taste. Wearily,
+he shut his eyes. It was no good thinking when your mind had become a
+circle--a very small circle. He remembered something she had once said,
+"The future looks like the present, stretching interminably ahead in the
+shadow of the past." She had always understood everything, so she didn't
+deserve to be forgiven anything.
+
+The front door bell rang and at once, he felt sick and faint. A ring
+still excited him as much as it had done in the days when it might have
+been hers. It was a ridiculous state of nerves that he had never been
+able to get out of.
+
+A moment later she was in the room.
+
+An absolute limpness had come over him. If his life had depended on it,
+he couldn't have lifted his hand. The surface of his mind examined every
+detail of her--the intense whiteness of her face and the severe
+blackness of her clothes, the fact that she wore no jewel of any sort,
+not even a ring--except, of course, her wedding-ring. He had never seen
+it before and it seemed a gaudy splash of colour out of harmony with the
+rest of her.
+
+She took off her hat and laid it on the table. Then she walked to the
+window, touching the things she passed with a little caressing gesture.
+He noticed that she picked up the unpointed pencil and he felt a little
+desolate feeling, as if he had lost his only friend.
+
+Suddenly, she turned round, "I am leaving England to-morrow," she said.
+
+He shivered at her velvety voice, as he would have shivered had his hand
+touched suede. "Well," his voice was too natural to be natural, "you
+don't want to say good-bye to me again, do you?"
+
+"Is there such a thing as 'good-bye,'" she mused; "won't this room
+always be a part of my life? Can one end anything? A chapter, a
+paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on
+living in spite of subsequent events?"
+
+Relentlessly he brought her down from her generalisations.
+
+"You have ended my life," he said.
+
+"Oh, no." She was sitting beside him on the sofa. Gently and tentatively
+she put her hand on his. "Take it away," he said roughly, miserably,
+conscious that he was behaving like a hero of melodrama, and then more
+quietly, "can't you spare me anything?"
+
+"I never could spare any one anything, could I? Not _even_ myself?"
+
+He resisted the wistful pleading of her eyes, taking a savage pleasure
+in their tired look. No doubt the preparations for her journey had
+exhausted her. Her hand was lying limply on the arm of the sofa.
+
+"What does it feel like to wear a wedding-ring?" he asked harshly.
+
+"It feels so strange at first. One keeps catching sight of it and being
+made to feel different by it. Somehow, it really matters, it really
+seems to mean something."
+
+"Indeed?" He was ashamed of the cheap cynicism of his tone. It wasn't
+what he had meant to say.
+
+She waited a few minutes and then she got up and put on her hat, deftly
+arranging her veil with almost mechanical quickness and skill. Then she
+pulled on her gloves. How well he knew the swift deliberateness of her
+movements. Without turning round she left the room. He heard her go into
+the dining-room.... A few minutes later, he heard her come out again. He
+heard her open and shut the front door.... He went to the open window.
+Would she look up? Surely that was the test of whether or not she was
+still the same--the eternal. In the past, whatever had happened between
+them, she had never been able to resist that final peep, half to see
+whether he was there, half to send up a little tiny semi-binding glance
+of reconciliation. Sometimes, when he had been very angry with her he
+had watched from behind the curtains. To-day, he was at the open window,
+waiting to send her the smile which was to obliterate the past
+half-hour, the past six months. It was not to be so much a smile as a
+look, a benediction.
+
+She got into her taxi. Through the far window she told the driver where
+to go. She never glanced behind her, she never glanced up.
+
+He shut the window with a shiver. "The end," he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MISUNDERSTOOD
+
+[_To JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES_]
+
+
+Her greatness was an accepted fact. Her fame had not been a dashing
+offensive but an inevitable advance quietly over-running the world.
+People who never read knew her name as well as Napoleon's. There was,
+somehow, something a little irreverent about being her contemporary. To
+attend the birth of so many masterpieces gave you the feeling of a
+legendary past invading the present.
+
+A few great critics wrote wonderfully about her, but a vast majority of
+them, trained only in witty disparagement and acute disintegrating
+perception, became empty and formal in face of an unaccustomed challenge
+to admiration and reverence.
+
+It is only the generous who give to the rich, the big who praise the
+big; the niggardly salve their consciences in doles to the humbly poor,
+making life into a pilgrimage of greedy patrons in search of grateful
+victims.
+
+June was radiantly removed from the possible inroads of charity. You
+couldn't even pretend to have discovered her--unless, of course, you
+had met her--then you were quite sure that you had. Her friends
+explained--as friends always do--that it was what she was, not what she
+did, that mattered, that her letters and her conversation were far more
+wonderful than her books, that she was her own greatest masterpiece.
+
+It was irritating to be forced out of it like that, but when you had
+seen her you began doing the same thing.
+
+It was impossible not to want to tell people that her hair was like a
+crisp heap of rusty October beech leaves, that she always had time for
+you. And then you began to explain that she was happily married, which
+led you to the fact that she was happy, which reminded you that you were
+happy, by which time no one was listening to you. But it didn't seem to
+matter. People would ask such silly questions about her. "Does she
+admire Dostoievski?" they would say, and you would answer, "She has the
+most enchanting brown squirrel----"
+
+George wasn't thinking any of those things. His mind didn't work like
+that. He was eating a huge breakfast, with the "Times" propped up
+against his coffee pot. The two and a half columns about her new book
+annoyed him. He hated a woman to get herself talked about--June, too, of
+all people. There was nothing new-fangled about June. Why, his mother
+loved her and she was so pretty and so fond of clothes and babies. There
+was really no excuse for her sprawling over his paper when she ought to
+have been moving discreetly through the social column like his other
+female friends.
+
+There was really no reason for a happy, cared-for woman to write. It
+wasn't even as if she had to earn her own living. Richard ought to put
+his foot down, but Richard didn't seem to mind. One might almost have
+thought that he was proud of his wife's reputation, if one hadn't known
+him to be such a manly man. After all, a woman's place was in her
+home--or the Court Circular. She should never stray from birth, deaths
+and marriages to other parts of the paper. Even the sporting news
+(though he liked a woman to play a good game of golf or a good game of
+tennis) was _hardly_ the place for a lady.
+
+George knew that he was working himself up and he hated doing that at
+breakfast. So he started undoing the elaborate knot of a brown paper
+parcel to soothe his nerves--George never cut string. And out of it
+emerged her book--her new book. It was beautifully bound (she knew that
+he liked a book to look nice) and on the fly leaf was the inscription:
+"A leather cover, a little paper and my love."
+
+It was as if she had sent him a box or a paper weight or a clock. It
+wasn't the gift, it was the thought that mattered. She knew that he had
+never read any of her books, but they were as good a vehicle for her
+affection as another.
+
+"You are the only person," she had said to him, "to whom my books are
+really tokens," and she had smiled very radiantly as if he were the only
+person who had discovered the real secret of her books. George reflected
+sadly that he was the only person who understood her. Why, it was
+maddening to think that any one reading those paragraphs in the "Times"
+might imagine her middle-aged and ugly and spectacled. And how were they
+to know that her knowledge of cricket averages was probably greater than
+that of the Selection Committee? Probably, too, they pictured her with
+short hair, June, with her crinkling crown of autumn beach leaves; and
+thick ankles, June with her Shepperson legs; and blunt inky fingers,
+June with her rosy pointing nails and her hands like uncurling fans.
+
+His mind went to other things, her low hard volleys and the lithe, easy
+grace with which she leapt over the lawn-tennis net. In thinking of her,
+the irritation her writing caused him decreased. It seemed altogether
+too irrelevant. June was the sort of woman one did things for. Helpless,
+he reflected with satisfaction, thinking of her tininess. Why, he could
+lift her up with one hand. George always mixed up physical phenomena
+with psychological fact. Small women were in need of protection; pale
+women were delicate; clever women were masculine--the greatest of all
+crimes. June might think it funny to be clever, but no one could deny
+that she was feminine--the sort of woman who appealed to you to do
+little tiny things for her (things you would have done in any case), as
+if they were very important and very dramatic and very difficult. George
+liked the sort of woman who said to him: "Mr. Carruthers, you who know
+everything----" It was apt, of course, to lead you into a lot of
+trouble, but that was one of the necessary results of being a man and
+having a superior intellect. June wasn't like that. She never asked you
+for legal advice or financial tips. She simply thought it most angelic
+of you to have fetched her coat and so clever of you to have noticed
+that it was getting chilly. And when you sent her flowers on her
+birthday, she would explain to you the flow of delight she had felt and
+perhaps a tiny little moment of surprise until she realised that of
+course it wasn't surprising at all, but just exactly what she knew at
+the bottom of her heart you would do--you, who were such a wonderful
+friend. Only the flowers were far more beautiful than she could have
+imagined and how had you been able to find them?
+
+George had a photograph of June on his writing table. People were apt to
+stop short at it and say: "Is that the _great_ June Rivers, the writer?"
+And he would brush the question aside--one must be loyal--and say: "She
+is a friend of mine," rather stiffly, as if they had said that she had
+run away from her husband or been found drunk.
+
+He looked at it this morning, and suddenly he felt that he must see
+her--a feeling she frequently inspired. He knew that she hated the
+telephone, so he sent her a little note.
+
+"Dear June: Thank you for your beautifully-bound book. May I come round
+this afternoon? I long to see your hair."
+
+He wondered why he had put that: it was a silly sort of thing to say; so
+he scratched out the "hair" very carefully so that you could see
+nothing, and substituted "you." Then he wrote "George" and, after a
+moment's hesitation, added the postscript:
+
+"Of course you saw that Macaulay had taken four wickets for two runs?"
+
+Half an hour later her answer reached him.
+
+"George dear, please come this afternoon. I was so hoping you would.
+Come whatever time suits you. I shall be happy and patient and impatient
+waiting for you." ("That doesn't mean anything," he growled to himself.
+"Pity she can't write more clearly.") "Of course I saw about Macaulay.
+June."
+
+At five he was on her doorstep, and a very few moments later he was
+holding both her hands. They seemed somehow to have got lost in his.
+Her hair was crisper and rustier than ever, swirling about in
+competitive overlapping ripples. Her eyes, like a shallow Scotch brook,
+were laughing at him: like transparent toffee they were or burnt sugar
+or amber. "June," he said, and his voice was funny and thick, "I had
+forgotten how pretty you were."
+
+"That was just a little plot you were making with yourself to please
+me," she said.
+
+They sat happily on a sofa and talked about the wonderful way Mr. Fender
+managed the Surrey bowling; they discussed the iniquities of the
+Selection Committee; they decided that no woman who played the base line
+game could ever be quite first class. They considered the relative
+merits of Cromer and Brighton from the point of view of George's mother;
+they agreed that being braced was one thing and being overbraced
+another. Then June told George that he ought to marry, and George said
+that he was not a marrying man, and June said that men became the worst
+old maids and that a man's place was in the home and George thought that
+she had got it wrong by accident.
+
+June was perfectly happy. She loved talking to George--George who adored
+her without knowing that she had genius, only that she had sympathy--had
+no idea that she was a great woman, only that she was a charming one.
+He was looking at her with a worried expression.
+
+"June," he said, "you look tired."
+
+"Oh, but I'm not a bit."
+
+He put her feet up and covered them with a shawl.
+
+"I wish you would stop writing," he said. "What good do books do? Health
+is the only thing that matters."
+
+"Loving is the only thing that matters," she murmured, "loving and being
+loved."
+
+"Well," (George thought it so like a woman to go off at a tangent like
+that), "you've got Richard."
+
+"Richard," she twinkled, "is not like you. He loves my books."
+
+"He ought to know better," George asserted severely, and at that moment
+in he came.
+
+"George!" Richard was jubilant. "Have you heard the news?"
+
+"What news?" George was thinking of the Carpentier-Lewis fight due that
+night.
+
+"June has been awarded the Nobel prize."
+
+"How splendid!" George looked a little puzzled. "Is it for life saving?"
+
+"Yes," June put in quickly.
+
+"I'm not at all surprised." George beamed at her. "You always were as
+plucky as they made 'em and gifted. Do you remember how charmingly you
+used to sing? 'Not a big voice, but so true,' Mother used to say, and
+she's a great judge."
+
+"Your mother has always been so sweet to me."
+
+"What a talented woman like you wants to write for beats me."
+
+George had got back to his grievance again, but she lured him on to the
+subject of irises on which they were both experts, and it was not till
+just before dinner that he hurried away.
+
+Then suddenly he remembered that he hadn't asked her whose life she had
+saved. How silly and how selfish! It was so like her not to talk about
+herself, and then he saw on a patch of posters: "June Rivers awarded the
+Nobel prize," and though he was very late he stopped to buy an evening
+paper.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+COUNTERPOINT
+
+[_To THE MARCHESE GIOVANNI VISCONTI VENOSTA_]
+
+
+Matthew half shut his eyes--as he always did when he particularly wanted
+to see.
+
+"For the first time in my life," he said, "I regret my myopia.
+Confronted with this room, imagination pales before sight."
+
+Virginia looked round--at the strawberry ice brocade, at the gilt, at
+the Bouchers--so painstaking and so painful--at the palms that seemed to
+conceal manicurists and barbers.
+
+"Look," he continued, "at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose
+take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair and dye."
+
+"Oh,"--Virginia's smile was playing like a light over his face--"think
+of the days when her eyes were like stars and her ears like shells and
+her hair was curling all over the place."
+
+"Virginia," his voice was tender, "where you are there are no more
+palms, wigs turn into hair, rouge into blushes----"
+
+"Matthew," she said, "you are a romantic and I am the only person in the
+world who knows it."
+
+"You are the only person in the world with whom I am in love."
+
+"For the moment."
+
+"How practical you are!" he teased, "full of forethought and arri�re
+pens�es. Isn't the moment the capture of the divine?"
+
+She sighed a little--wise with the wisdom of frustrated dreams, and she
+thought how happy he was--happy with the happiness of iridescent,
+ever-changing whimsies.
+
+"Virginia, does that young man love you?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"The one in spectacles."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"One can never be sure."
+
+"Of course if he doesn't, it proves that I am right in saying that
+spectacles are fatal. They prevent people from using either their eyes
+or their imagination. Shall I go up to him and ask him?"
+
+"He would answer: 'I don't understand.'"
+
+"And I would explain: 'Virginia is the only lady in orange,' and he
+would look at you for a moment or two and, holding out his hand in an
+ecstasy of gratitude, he would say: 'Thank you. Yes, I love her.'"
+
+"Matthew," she murmured, "what an unsuitable name."
+
+They sat in silence, interfered with only by the necessity of
+convincing passers-by that they did not want to be interrupted.
+
+"Matthew," she said, "do you see that tall fair man?"
+
+"The blond beast?"
+
+"With a very tall woman."
+
+"With gold hair and eyes like cows in pictures of Christ in a manger?"
+
+"Yes. He loves her."
+
+"How suitable."
+
+"But it isn't. He has a red-haired wife."
+
+"How unsuitable."
+
+"Matthew, do be serious. I like him."
+
+"How complicated."
+
+"I told him I hated his air of perfunctory but restrained passion, and
+he laughed."
+
+"Any one would have."
+
+"And we made friends."
+
+"You always make friends with everybody."
+
+"You are unsympathetic."
+
+"I am, I confess, a little bewildered by the situation. Do I understand
+that you are suffering from an unrequited passion for a man who is
+illegitimately attached to a magnificent cow and legitimately bound to a
+bewitching squirrel?"
+
+"Matthew, you really are provoking. What I mean is that he is making a
+fool of himself."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he might do something irrevocable."
+
+"Lucky man."
+
+She looked at him in desperation--a desperation half exasperation and
+half enchantment. If only Matthew would sometimes appear serious--there
+is something so restful about appearances. Instead of which he always
+remained superlatively unsatisfactory and superlatively irresistible.
+
+"Virginia," he said, "let us leave all this and drive round the park and
+I will talk to you like a lover in a bad book and I will mean every word
+I say."
+
+"We can't go yet," she murmured.
+
+"Virginia,"--his voice was urgent--"I will be divinely pompous."
+
+That was so like him. He always tried to safeguard the simplest, most
+sincere moments of his life by inverted commas. It was a little trick
+that always irritated her.
+
+"What an artist you are," she remarked acidly.
+
+"Yes, indeed," he assented, smiling her out of her irritation. And then:
+"I have known you, Virginia, ever since I can remember."
+
+"You told me that the first time we met."
+
+"It is still true."
+
+"How magnificent."
+
+It was her turn now to ward off what she was longing for. To be serious
+with Matthew was a form of disarmament you always regretted.
+
+"And knowing you as I do, I recognise the crusading light in your eye
+and I must point out to you that your altruistic excursions have not
+always ended by tidying up the situation."
+
+"Alas, no."
+
+"Now, why plunge into the eternal triangle? There is really no r�le for
+you unless you propose to supplant the cow. What, by the way, is her
+name?"
+
+"Grace."
+
+"I don't like the statuesque," he said, wrinkling up his eyes. "Look at
+her ecstatic vacant expression. A dangerous combination."
+
+Virginia wished she had not given him this theme. He would weave it into
+such marvellous patterns that she would never be able to get it out
+intact again.
+
+"I must have some more facts," he said. "What is the squirrel called?"
+
+"Estelle."
+
+"And the hero?"
+
+"Edgar."
+
+"More and more suitable. What prophetic parents! How admirably they kept
+their heads at the font. The squirrel is very vivacious--is it a brave
+front, a blind eye or a shallow heart?"
+
+"Estelle is a courageous woman and discreet with the unpierceable
+reticence of spontaneity."
+
+"How delightful. I might try Estelle myself."
+
+"You might."
+
+"If I said 'I love you,' would she laugh or cry?"
+
+"Laugh, I think."
+
+"With a little hidden tear in her voice?"
+
+"I have my doubts about the hidden tear."
+
+"Then she would be no good to me. I like mixed effects."
+
+At this moment Grace and Edgar danced by. They were both radiantly fair
+and a little colossal in scale. Her eyes were half shut and her mouth
+was half open.
+
+"Matthew," Virginia was firm, "something must be done. How can he scale
+the heights of a great passion carrying that hold-all?"
+
+"An empty hold-all isn't so very heavy."
+
+"It is if you can't put it down."
+
+"Virginia," he said, "your missionary zeal appals me. Why invade the
+situation? What are you going to tell the man? That he has children?"
+
+"No. That he is throwing his life into a cul-de-sac."
+
+"He won't believe you."
+
+"No."
+
+"And it will probably end by his falling in love with you and think
+what a terrible mess the cow and the squirrel will make."
+
+Edgar came up to them.
+
+"Will you give me the pleasure of a dance?"
+
+"I should love to."
+
+Virginia's apricot had become a strand in the pattern of the ball-room.
+
+A parma violet lady settled on Matthew like a fly.
+
+"I can't think how you have anything left to say to Virginia," she
+remarked disagreeably. "But I suppose you simply make love to her."
+
+"It is not simple at all."
+
+"Let us go and sit somewhere," Edgar was saying, and they went into
+another room.
+
+All of our real indiscretions in life come in the form of
+generalisations. A name is a warning, and we really give ourselves away
+in abstract philosophisings applied by an intelligent companion to the
+particular.
+
+"Why should we accept ready-made standards?" Edgar said. "None of the
+great governing forces of life can fit into a ditch of conventions."
+
+"No."
+
+"Sometimes you have to set out to sea and turn your back on the old
+familiar coastline."
+
+"In a pleasure boat for an excursion."
+
+"In a sailing ship for distant seas."
+
+"Argosies have a way of turning into penny steamers."
+
+"You ought not to say that--you of all people, who sail the seas in a
+tub with a sunshade."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I am at the mercy of the winds. But you have a harbour
+and an anchor and a flag to fly."
+
+"You are thinking that I'm a fool."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One must sometimes cut one's losses."
+
+"One must sometimes cut one's gains--a much more difficult thing."
+
+"You can't throw away light."
+
+"The world is brighter with your back to the sun."
+
+"Virginia," he said, "I have made up my mind."
+
+"What can I say? I am helpless. I see you going shipwreck on dummy
+rocks--the water let in by a penknife."
+
+"You are cruel."
+
+"Don't you think I know those frontiers, when paradise seems but a step
+away, but you know that it is a step you can't retrace?"
+
+"Why should you want to go backwards?"
+
+She looked past him into space.
+
+"Behind us," she murmured, "lie so many things--memories of childhood,
+dim happy echoes, primroses and hoops and peace shot with laughter. When
+you have taken your step you daren't look back. Remembering hurts too
+much. And so you look forward--always forward, knowing that the promised
+land is behind you."
+
+Grace was dancing round and round, wondering how one stopped. Away from
+him she felt restless and nervous and will-less and incomplete, like a
+frustrated animal lost and impotent, with smouldering rage in her heart
+and sulky fires in her eyes. Why didn't he come to release her, to calm
+the tearing fever of her blood?
+
+Again and again she walked through the library and always he was on the
+sofa with Virginia--Virginia in her orange haze melting into cushions;
+and sometimes he was bending right forward, his whole body curved into
+urgency. And when she passed, he half looked up with the tail end of a
+smile falling as it were accidentally in her direction.
+
+Estelle laughed and talked, her feet twinkled, her eyes danced.
+Marriage, she said, was an altogether delightful thing, quite different
+from what people thought----
+
+Matthew was introduced to her. He explained that love was so important
+that it could only be discussed lightly. He said that her hair reminded
+him ... he wished he could think of what, but he had such a bad memory
+for metaphors. It took him all his time to remember that a harp was like
+water and Carpentier like a Greek god. It was funny, wasn't it, to have
+such a weak head. He thought it came from hay fever--he always had hay
+fever during the third week of May. It came entirely from honeysuckle.
+
+Estelle said that she would like to sit in the library. Grace was in a
+corner pulling monosyllables out of her mouth like teeth.
+
+Virginia was still in the middle of the sofa, a dissolving mass of
+orange mist. Edgar was talking away all risk of his suiting the action
+to the word. Estelle was dimpling.
+
+"Do you remember," she said to Matthew, "that orange is flame-colour?"
+
+"By Jove, yes," he said, "oriflammes and hell fire."
+
+A low murmur came from the sofa.
+
+"Will you introduce me to your husband?" Matthew asked.
+
+They all talked together.
+
+"By the way, Virginia," Matthew said, "the young man does love you."
+
+"Dear me, how very nice."
+
+"It only required me to point it out to him."
+
+"Was he pleased?"
+
+"Delighted. By the way, Mr. Wilmot,"--Matthew turned to Edgar--"do you
+ever wear spectacles?"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+VILLEGIATURA
+
+[_To MARCEL PROUST_]
+
+
+What a fool he had been to come. These wooden walls creaking at a touch,
+and the floors responding like an animal in pain to the lightest
+footstep. Not that Marie Aim�e had light footsteps--far from it. She
+clattered about with the happy noisiness of a good conscience and
+perfect health. In her hands the opening of a door became an air-raid
+and yet what could you do, confronted with her rosy face beaming with a
+child-like confidence in giving pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+No, it was entirely his own fault. Everything was what he might have
+expected. The sea was just where he had been told it would be, the air
+was relentlessly bracing, the cleanliness of the Hotel Bungalow reminded
+you of a shiny soaped face which had never known powder. It was all, he
+reflected, quite horrible. The salt-laden wind blowing the sand up from
+the dunes, the hard bright sunshine, the effect everything gave you of
+having been painted with the six colours of a child's rather cheap
+paint-box.
+
+"A different man," she had said he would feel. Well he felt it
+already--the lassitude of his body feebly revolting against the
+impending bracing, his eyes watering at the glare. Health and
+inspiration, Marthe had said, dreamless sleep, an insatiable appetite
+and perfect peace in which to finish his novel. "Think how quiet it will
+be," she had said. As if the country were ever quiet, crowded as it was
+with locos and dogs and sabots. Surely peace meant Paris in August, with
+every one away, thick carpets and a noiseless valet.
+
+Maurice imagined himself merging into a huge armchair, just able to see
+a square glass vase of Juliette roses--gilt petals lined with deep pink
+velvet. Why on earth were there never any flowers in the country? And no
+one would disturb him--no one. Privacy is only possible in a big town.
+Every detail of life in the Hotel Bungalow was revealed to him in a
+series of sights, sounds and smells. And should a fellow lunatic arrive,
+how was he to avoid him? At every meal there would be little exchanges
+of the banal, after dinner a game of billiards--even possibly, horror of
+horrors, potential excursions planned with zest and good fellowship. And
+all the time he would be saying "No," more and more ungraciously, or,
+worse still--and far more likely--saying "yes."
+
+And then where would his novel be? Not that it was possible any way to
+write in a place where the sun was always in your eyes, the wind blew
+your paper away and creaking boards made sitting in your bedroom out of
+the question.
+
+Marthe was a fool, given up entirely to hygiene and plans for other
+people. "You will come back bubbling over with physical fitness, your
+dear face all tanned," she had said. "Dear" indeed! It was simply a
+bribe. He was being bribed for his own good. And to think that like a
+great gaby he had been shoved off to the sea by one term of endearment,
+and to a place, too, where there was neither shade nor shadows, simply
+miles and miles of bright monotonous sea, three dusty cornflowers, two
+bedraggled poppies and the sun all around you.
+
+Tanned, indeed! Why his face would be all blisters and his eyes
+bloodshot.
+
+The insensitiveness of women!
+
+If Marthe were here she would bathe before breakfast, feed the hens,
+find the eggs, encourage the cook, pat the dog, listen to the story of
+Marie Aim�e's life, pick the cornflowers, praise the cook, churn the
+butter, play with the children, climb on to the hay cart, collect shells
+on the beach, lie in the sun, let the sand trickle through her fingers
+and explain with perfect sincerity that it was the most delightful place
+in the world.
+
+But he didn't like paddling or shrimping or sailing or farmyard life.
+He wanted a velvet lawn, a cedar, a rose garden, lavender, a sun dial,
+iced lemonade and solitude. Or he wanted his own cool apartment, with
+drawn sunblinds, vases full of flowers, his immense writing table, and a
+deserted Paris around him.
+
+Women always did to you as they wanted to be done by. That sort of
+literal interpretation of Christianity showed such a lack of
+imagination. It was no good telling Marthe that you didn't like the sea,
+she simply wouldn't believe it.
+
+"Think of the sunset reflected in the wet sand," she would say, and if
+you told her that you didn't want to think about it, that it was no fit
+subject for an active mind, she would be hurt.
+
+In any case no one had a right to make you do things for your own good.
+It was a horrible form of self-sacrifice. If Marthe had said, "_Please_
+go to St. Jean-les-Flots and pick me a poppy," he would have been
+delighted, but to stay at the Hotel Bungalow in the interests of his own
+health was a very different matter.
+
+Marie Aim�e was putting a pot with one red geranium in it on his writing
+table. It was, she explained, still very early in the season but
+Monsieur must not be discouraged. Later it became very gay with dancing
+and Japanese lanterns in the garden. The Hotel Bungalow would be quite
+full, whereas now there was only Monsieur and a lady.
+
+"A lady?"
+
+"But yes, Monsieur."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"A lady of a certain age."
+
+Maurice hoped that it would be an uncertain age. Of course every one
+over twenty would seem old to Marie Aim�e. Probably the lady was on that
+exquisite frontier line, the early thirties, when the bud is already
+unfurling its petals, angles have softened into curves, and the
+significant is stirring in everything like a quickening child. Thirty,
+the age of delicate response, of subtle tasting, divorced equally from
+the ignorant impetuosity of youth and the desperate clutchings of middle
+age. How he disliked young girls with their sunburn, their manly
+strides, their meaningless giggles, their eternal nicknames! And, over
+their heads, a warning and a trade mark, that sword of
+Damocles--marriage.
+
+Maurice was feeling a little happier. As he walked into lunch he felt a
+real twinge of curiosity. Ridiculous it was--why he was getting quite
+romantic, imagining an exquisite creature on a holiday from her husband.
+That was no doubt the result of the Hotel Bungalow. On the velvet lawn
+with the cedar, the rose garden, the sun dial and the iced lemonade, he
+would have been enjoying to the full his usual ironic detachment, but
+St. Jean-les-Flots would throw any one to romance.
+
+He walked into the dining room. At the far end with her back to him sat
+the lady. She wore a white coat embroidered with black, a white skirt, a
+white hat with a white lace veil. On the chair beside her lay a Holland
+sunshade lined with green. It was he thought, deplorable, and indicated
+yellow spectacles. Her feet were very small and gave you the impression
+of an insecure foundation to her body. Her back was broad. She was
+certainly over forty. Forty, thought Maurice, the dangerous age--the
+desperate age. From forty to fifty, the flower in full bloom, the period
+of engulfing passions, of urgent transitory satisfactions. For how many
+women must it not be a ten years' death struggle.
+
+"What a place," Maurice was disgusted; "it is driving me to melodrama."
+
+The lady got up with a certain waddling stateliness (perhaps after all
+she was fifty). Her clothes fell into perfection--she walked slowly and
+calmly with appraising steps. The lace veil was over her face. She did
+not forget her sunshade, her bag, or her handkerchief. Louis, the
+waiter, opened the door for her. She sailed out like a gondola on the
+stage, or Lohengrin's swan. Her movements gave an effect of invisible
+wheels.
+
+During the afternoon she remained undetectable, which was a tour de
+force at St. Jean-les-Flots, where the landscape was a successful
+conspiracy against concealment, and a sunshade could be seen for miles.
+Maurice had a tiresome feeling that she was lying out somewhere with
+that horrible sunshade over her head and a novel by Gyp on her lap. Had
+she, he wondered, ever read any of his books? Perhaps when she found out
+his name she would come up to him and say: "Are you _the_ Mr. Maurice
+Van Trean?" And when he had bowed in the affirmative, she would add that
+she liked "Sur les Rives" best of his books--"she had read them all many
+times--and especially that marvellous description of Camille's return to
+her husband."
+
+Maurice walked for miles down the hard glaring white road. It was the
+most uncomfortable thing he could think of doing, and when you are
+determined to enjoy nothing there is a certain voluptuous satisfaction
+in a maximum of unpleasantness. The air was burning and solid. An
+occasional convolvulus drowned in dust straggled in weary clinging grace
+by the roadside--a pathetic symbol, he reflected, of the pale refined
+irrelevant women who fade ineffectually beside the highways of life. He
+thought of Marthe with her urgent pulsating rhythm, the rhythm he
+remembered bitterly, that had brought him here. He wished vindictively
+that she were beside him, the hard burning surface of the road biting
+through the soles of her shoes. He would walk on and on till there were
+blisters on her feet and her steps were lagging. His teeth were set in
+the grim satisfaction of revenge.
+
+"This is the country," he would say. "Do you feel the health-giving sea
+breeze you told me about?"
+
+He stopped suddenly. Walking towards him was the lady. The offensive
+sunshade was over her head, but her veil was up. She was, he supposed,
+forty-six--no, forty-four. Her eyes were wide apart, dark and indolent
+and long--brown or blue they might have been. Her face was wide and so
+was her mouth with lips like curtains drawn across the teeth. Her
+cheek-bones were high and her skin, like marshmallow, was marbled with
+the bright yellow lights and bright blue shadows of early afternoon.
+There was a curious grace about her broad solid figure, an unhurried
+indifferent grace, as if she said to herself, "I shall please at my own
+time." She was not pretty. Her clothes belonged to her as essentially as
+her limbs.
+
+Maurice took off his hat.
+
+"Forgive me, Madame, but I think that we are both living at the Hotel
+Bungalow."
+
+"I think so, too," she said drily.
+
+He thought that she thought that he was taking a liberty, which made him
+suppose that she was not quite a lady, which made him accuse himself of
+vulgarity.
+
+And then she laughed, and his accusations, both of her and of himself,
+fled.
+
+They walked back together and he explained to her just how much he hated
+the sea, the heat, the Hotel Bungalow, the cook, and Marie Aim�e's
+footsteps. He explained how anxious he had been about her--how he had
+longed to see her face--how much her sunshade had depressed him--how her
+lace veil had been a personal enemy.
+
+She said that she adored the country....
+
+He told her that only in big towns could you find peace or flowers.
+
+She said the Hotel Bungalow had "un caract�re assez sp�cial...."
+
+He did not listen to her comments--they were mere breathing places. On
+the subject of the sea he was, he thought, almost witty, with a touch of
+real indignation.
+
+She said the sea was her passion....
+
+He decided that she was an obstinate woman--ent�t�e. How ridiculous to
+love the sea--especially for some one who pretended to like the country.
+The two were practically incompatible. Could she explain her point of
+view?
+
+The sea, she said, was such a wonderful escape....
+
+He was thrilled. A thousand explanations of her presence at the Hotel
+Bungalow jostled one another in his mind.
+
+Of course he quite understood what she meant about the sea. It had a
+certain spaciousness and it did, so to speak, quarantine you from life.
+For instance, in a rowing boat, it was impossible to feel the importance
+of being a snob.
+
+That was not, she said, exactly what she meant....
+
+Maurice was annoyed. He was accustomed to people who were proud to share
+his meanings.
+
+Madame would perhaps be able to explain....
+
+It was not, Madame murmured, a question of being able to explain, but of
+being able to interrupt....
+
+Maurice flushed and relapsed into sulky silence. He watched his
+companion trotting by his side, taking three little steps to each one of
+his. He took a childish pleasure in making his strides as wide as
+possible, upsetting the rhythm of her walk. The brim of her hat hid her
+eyes. He felt that his uncertainty as to their expression gave the
+matter an interest that it did not intrinsically possess. Even if she
+were smiling, what did it matter?
+
+Suddenly she turned to him.
+
+"Has Monsieur anything more to conceal from me?" she asked.
+
+Maurice capitulated. It was a delightful formula. He wished that he had
+thought of it himself. It was she, he said, who had been hiding things
+from him. Her eyes, for instance. All this time he had been wondering
+about the expression of her eyes.
+
+"And yet you deny the potency of the country," she sighed, "the
+miracle-working country, which compels a young man of twenty-seven to
+wonder about the expression of an old woman of forty-four."
+
+"Madame," he said, "I am very old. I have ceased to take myself
+seriously. You are very young, for you can force others to treat you
+with curiosity and respect."
+
+She reminded him that eight minutes ago he had taken himself seriously.
+"It was you who made me," he retorted, "you have given me back my
+youth."
+
+They went on like that for quite a long time--gallant lawn-tennis--long
+base line rallies with an occasional smash. And then he said that he
+must be indiscreet--specifically so. Why had she come to St.
+Jean-les-Flots?
+
+It was, she explained meditatively, an escape (he noticed that it was
+the second time that she had used that word). The Hotel Bungalow was
+very clean, the food was good, the air was marvellous....
+
+She pulled herself together.
+
+When you took a holiday, she said, you had to make a careful choice
+between old acquaintances and new ones. Which was likely to be the more
+tiring? She herself always went to new places at the wrong time of year.
+Then it was a case of friendship, or nothing. The people who visited
+watering places out of season were always either impossible or
+enchanting. Very often amusingly impossible and temporarily enchanting,
+but so much the better. There is a certain safety in the transitory.
+
+Is Madame married? Maurice asked abruptly. It was the sort of question
+that had to be asked brusquely, or not at all.
+
+"Yes--No--Yes. That is to say, I have a husband. He will probably come
+here for a day or two later. He is tr�s comme il faut."
+
+"Surely you do not blame him for coming to see you."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It is magnificent, but it is not life. One is not always young enough
+to permit oneself these phantasies. At fifty-six it is silly to waste
+two days visiting some one you don't want to see. But there, Edmond is
+like that. Oh! the stability when he says 'my wife.' It is superb. It
+must be grand, too, when he says 'ma maitresse'; he has the property
+sense. And how he adores women, woman, all women, any woman. Even
+sometimes me. And when he doesn't, he keeps the habits. Toujours des
+petits soins. He never goes out of training, even at home."
+
+"He sounds charming to live with."
+
+"Ah, yes. That is it. He is charming. One cannot bear it. To have the
+five-finger exercises of his irresistibility played on one. To be the
+stiff piano on which he practises but never plays. It is too much. And
+one remembers the days when one was the concert grand. Pouf. It is not
+agreeable."
+
+There was a pause. Maurice knew that she was going to say a great many
+other things.
+
+But they had reached the Hotel Bungalow. Regretfully they parted.
+
+He thought that she was a very remarkable woman indeed.
+
+She thought how like her husband he was. Her husband twenty-five years
+ago.
+
+At dinner she still was in black and white. Black covered with filmy
+laces, soft and shadowy and mysterious. After dinner they sat on the
+terrace and looked out at the inky relentless sea.
+
+"Being sensible is no good at all," she said with sudden passion.
+"Courage is the only helpful virtue; when I married I was young and very
+pretty and I had thought about life a lot. I knew that in men fidelity
+had the importance that they gave to it. To a few--very few--it
+matters--but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing
+at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk--squalid, if
+you like--but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on
+the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both
+sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved
+women--_psychologically_. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real
+sin against marriage. He was a great lover, an artist. Every woman was
+to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist. The
+colours and the sounds he got were marvellous. Sometimes he would try
+impossible subjects--for fun--but always he could bring some sort of
+harmony out of everything. Ma foi, it amuses me to watch him now--now
+that it is difficult, and he is fifty-six and I don't love him--but
+then, when everything was easy and he was twenty-seven and I cared--then
+it was--well, it was different."
+
+The way that her voice opened and shut reminded him of a sea anemone.
+
+"It is not the way to talk to a stranger, is it?" she said abruptly,
+"but I feel as if I had known you for a long time. For twenty-five
+years, to be exact," she added.
+
+Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied. He longed to tell her about Marthe.
+For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to
+make. He wondered why.
+
+"Bon soir, Monsieur," she said, and she walked up to bed with a
+characteristic lack of pause or hesitation.
+
+Maurice woke up--was woken up--knowing that he had something to look
+forward to. Sleepily he wondered what it was while patterns spread over
+his semi-consciousness--dreamily he saw Marthe in a filmy lace dress
+over black and he felt himself trying to play on a grand piano, every
+note of which was a sea anemone. Then he woke up completely, and with a
+delightful rush he remembered Madame and all of the marvellous things
+that she had told him and all of the significant things he had not yet
+said to her.
+
+He walked down to breakfast whistling. In the courtyard he patted the
+dog and lifted the patron's son on to his shoulder, then he asked the
+patronne if the cook had a name and whether he might some day come and
+watch her churn butter. In the dining room he praised the coffee, and
+admired the geraniums. St. Jean-les-Flots must have a particularly fine
+soil for geraniums, and what air! Why, he felt a different man already.
+
+Madame Marly--he had discovered her name--did not appear till lunch.
+They bowed to one another, and each talked a little to the waiter. It
+was delightful to keep their pleasure at arm's length. Coffee on the
+terrace brought them together.
+
+"You are right," she said, "the country is an impossible place. It makes
+one talk."
+
+"I love the country," he said.
+
+"And then the sea. It is always going on without you."
+
+"I have a passion for the sea," he murmured.
+
+"I would like to wring the neck of the cook, chloroform the dog, buy
+Marie Aim�e some lawn tennis shoes, and have a daily box of flowers from
+Paris."
+
+"They shall be ordered at once."
+
+"I should also like," she was looking out to sea, "to fill the hotel
+with people."
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"Perhaps," she added, "it would be simpler to go away."
+
+"Simpler but impossible."
+
+"Why impossible?"
+
+"The air is unique. The Hotel Bungalow...."
+
+"Please don't," she begged.
+
+"Besides, for the first time in my life I am becoming discreet."
+
+"Ah, no, my friend, believe me. It was merely that you, too, found it
+difficult to interrupt."
+
+"I did not want to interrupt."
+
+"There you had an advantage over me. I was longing to bring your
+remarks about the sea to an untimely end."
+
+Her laugh was the most confidential thing in the world. You felt as if
+she had given you an unlimited credit of intimacy. He thought that she
+was looking ten years younger in her creamy cr�pe de Chine dress, with
+her big straw hat, which seemed to have conquered, without an effort,
+the perfection and simplicity of the absolute.
+
+"What is it called?" he asked fingering it.
+
+"Cr�pe surprise."
+
+He asked her to describe its lines, but she refused.
+
+"Ne parlons pas robes," she said.
+
+They decided to go for a drive.
+
+The cocher explained that he had lost his wife, but that "Lisette �tait
+un tr�s bon petit cheval."
+
+They laughed--at him, at one another, at the sun, at the sea, at
+everything. He told her about the convolvuluses, and she said he ought
+to write a book.
+
+He told her his name.
+
+She puckered her forehead a little, and looked to him for help.
+
+He explained rather stiffly that he had written three novels, a book of
+short sketches, a book of light verse, and a phantasy on Algeria.
+
+She asked what they were called. He told her.
+
+She asked which was the best.
+
+He said that "Sur les Rives" had the best things in it. Perhaps it was
+less finished than some of the others, but it was on a bigger scale, the
+conception was more interesting.
+
+She asked what the conception was.
+
+He told her that it was about a woman who, out of affection for her
+husband, and deep intrinsical virtue, refuses to become the mistress of
+the man she passionately adores. He goes away and she gives herself to
+the first person she meets with a look of him. Her original great
+struggle has exhausted all her powers of resistance.
+
+Madame Marly was silent.
+
+"It is true," she said, "for big things we have big resistances, and for
+little things little resistances. And so we live our lives in small weak
+lapses--not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering
+our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf," she made a
+little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. "We occupy the
+places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl
+in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we
+occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We
+dissolve into air."
+
+"Not you," he said. "I feel it. You are so independent, so sure. Where
+are your hesitations? Your very doubts are challenges to truth."
+
+"Challenges to truth," she said. "It is a nice phrase."
+
+Driving back into the sunset they were silent. He wrapped her cloak
+round her, and once he kissed her hand, but it didn't feel as if it
+belonged to her. Her thoughts had taken her right away out of his
+presence, out of the carriage beyond the sunset. Where had they taken
+her? He wondered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night she came down, dressed in glowing apricot--"fold after fold
+to the fainting air."
+
+As always, her clothes seemed part of her, without ends or beginnings,
+flowing from her, a streaming enhancing accompaniment. He asked her if
+her dress were nymphe �mue or feuille morte. He was proud of knowing
+those two names. She said it was neither. He begged her to tell him, but
+she refused rather abruptly to discuss it. He said he loved her
+clothes--that he would like to know....
+
+"Pour l'amour de Dieu, ne parlons pas robes."
+
+He wondered at her irritability, but he obeyed.
+
+They went out on to the terrace. The sea was black and angry, all the
+waves at cross purposes.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Paula."
+
+"What will you say when I tell you that I love you, that I want you?"
+
+"You won't tell me because you will know that I don't want you to."
+
+Her voice was a part of the wind.
+
+"Why don't you want me to?" he was urgent--harsh with desire.
+
+"Because it all happened twenty-five years ago."
+
+He didn't understand.
+
+"Because--because there are some things you can't do twice--like your
+book, they are the big things that create a strength of resistance.
+Because they are the beautiful things that belong to our dreams. Because
+they are of a magic fabric, into which you can weave no facts."
+
+It was dark and he could not see her. The end of his cigarette was a
+bright spot in the night. The sea and the wind were the counterpoint of
+her voice.
+
+He felt unreal and remote and small. A tiny strand in the vast design of
+destiny.
+
+She got up and walked in. He did not move.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thank you for the flowers."
+
+The sun was glittering frivolous and cynical.
+
+The box he had ordered from Paris had arrived. First there was a mass of
+Juliette roses--gilt and velvet--then a staircase of sweet peas,
+flame-coloured, coral, crimson, magenta, purple, bronze and black.
+
+Both together they drank in the blaze of colour.
+
+Ecstatically he said to her,
+
+"You can't thank _me_, can you? They are too beautiful."
+
+"Perhaps not," she said, "but it was beauty unleashed by you."
+
+He looked at her with adoring eyes. She gave you phrases which lit
+torches in your soul.
+
+They walked down the beach together. The sea was light and mutinous.
+
+"How untransparent it is," he said, "lapis lazuli and turquoise and
+chrysoprase--no emeralds or aquamarines, or sapphires."
+
+"How are we to get in our purple without an amethyst?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"That is what comes from not reading the Book of Revelations," she said.
+
+They saw big, dissolving, poisonous jellyfish in the sea, mysteriously
+without lines--and tidy slabs of jellyfish on the beach. They found a
+starfish, and wondered who came to dance a sword dance round it. They
+picked up shells that looked as if they had fallen out of fading sunsets
+or glimmering dawns--they looked into pools of shutting and opening sea
+anemones.
+
+They never noticed a sardine box or an old boot.
+
+They were happy.
+
+Over her head was a scarlet paper sunshade. It looked like a huge
+tropical flower.
+
+"Paula," he said--and his eyes opened to her like a magic trap door.
+
+That night they stayed indoors.
+
+"Tell me the things that life has given you," he said, "the things that
+have made you so rich."
+
+"If I am rich," she said, "it is from the things that _I_ have given."
+
+"Yes," he said, "but why do you impoverish yourself at my expense?"
+
+"Please," she said, "don't talk about that. There are in all of us
+exposed places--you can call them pain or romance--Sehnsucht or
+memory--but they are the sanctuaries of our hearts--they cannot be
+violated."
+
+"Paula," he said, "you have made too much of life. You have made it into
+the sort of hope that is always a disillusionment."
+
+"Yes," she murmured very low.
+
+"Why were you so unpractical?" his bantering tone revived her.
+
+"I have done for some one (even for you, perhaps) what I have never done
+for myself;" she was smiling. "I will tell you a story. There was once a
+man who loved me. He was born with everything--a marvellous name, great
+riches, beauty, a magnetic quality that I have never seen equalled. I
+always reproached him with having added nothing to his inheritance--no
+glory--no achievement--'I have spent,' he would say, shrugging his
+shoulders. 'Wasted,' I retorted tartly. 'If you like. I have never
+admitted my past or my future as barriers--or even frontiers--to my
+actions. I have lived without forethought or arri�re pens�e--without the
+weakness of regrets or the stinginess of precautions,' and then he
+turned to me--his eyes were half shut and his voice was muffled as if a
+flood were battering on the door of his dispassionateness, 'I have had
+everything in life except you,' he said. I smiled at him, a little
+sadly, a little cynically. 'It is I who have given you the greatest
+gift,' I said. 'I have given you a regret and an illusion. Vous avez
+donc tout eu.' That night he killed himself."
+
+"And you, Paula, did you feel a murderess?"
+
+"No, a saviour."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was dressed in pale lilac--the coolest lilac in the world. It
+rippled round her like loving caressing waves.
+
+"What is your dress called, Paula?"
+
+"Oasis," she said. "'Indian summer' would have been a better name."
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Why do you always want to know?"
+
+"I am writing a book."
+
+"Tant pis."
+
+She was out of temper.
+
+The flowers arrived.
+
+Old-fashioned pink roses, coral carnations, purple stocks, pink pinks,
+mauve orchids, moss roses, patterned chintz-like phlox.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and for a moment she shut her eyes.
+
+Then:
+
+"Tell me about her," she said.
+
+"Marthe?"
+
+"Is that her name?"
+
+"She is vibrant."
+
+"But of course. What does she look like?"
+
+"Her hair is like a dirty new coin. You feel that you could polish it
+into brightness. Her eyes are like tea--yellow camomile tea. Her mouth
+is big and rather grave. There are electric waves of aliveness running
+all through her."
+
+"I do not like her."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"All that irrelevant, interfering vitality. It is dangerous."
+
+"And slumbering, mysterious magnetism, is that not dangerous?"
+
+"That, too."
+
+There was a thunderstorm and the air got cool.
+
+Madame Marly had a headache and dined in her room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day was grey--grey air, a grey sky, a grey countryside, a grey
+sea--not luminous, lustrous grey, but opaque chiffon drawn across the
+world.
+
+Paula's flowers had arrived--lemon-coloured hollyhocks, blue and mauve
+and purple delphiniums, filmy love-in-the-mist, primrose antirrhinums,
+snowy Madonna lilies with golden middles, huge creamy roses, tiny yellow
+rosebuds, straggling larkspurs.
+
+She was dressed in a grey whipcord coat and skirt with a grey swathed
+turban. She looked distant--on the brink of disappearance--not so much
+as if she were going to travel but as if she were going to vanish.
+
+She regarded the flowers with grave concentration. It was as if she felt
+for them a stern passionate devotion. She took one of the white roses
+and stroked it--as if it were a shy mother with her first child. Then
+she said:
+
+"I want to go for a long walk."
+
+They walked for miles and miles. The mist sprinkled her hair with
+dew-drops. It looked quite white. Her eyes were deep and brooding and
+you couldn't catch them.
+
+"Paula," Maurice said, "how remote you are."
+
+"Am I?" she said. And it made her more remote than ever.
+
+He walked desperately, as if each step were an obstacle painfully
+overcome. She walked with a swaying unconscious rhythm, as if she did
+not know what she was doing.
+
+She cut off his perfunctory attempts at conversation with a
+monosyllable. When they got home they were both tired.
+
+They each decided to have a hot bath and rest before dinner.
+
+She was dressed in very severe perfect black, marvellous lines, waiting
+to be sculpted.
+
+He told her so.
+
+She pursed her lips.
+
+They sat in front of the fire in the hall.
+
+"Tell me a little more about your husband?" he said.
+
+"What can I tell you? I know him so well. You see, I have loved him and
+hated him--I have become indifferent to him--and I appreciate him. But I
+have had nothing from him that a hundred other people have not
+had--except, perhaps, his name."
+
+"Marly?"
+
+She looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Marly?" she laughed. "Marly is not even my own name. We are all of us
+so very monogamous when we love, proprietary, exclusive, jealous,
+whatever you like to call it. Edmond's character was like a pergola.
+You walked in and out. There were always roses and jasmine, clematis and
+wisteria, peeps of the garden and patches of the sky--but never a shut
+door--never one. Oh," there was a breaking passion in her voice--"how I
+longed for four walls, for a lock and key, for a dungeon, for bars.
+'Don't you know,' I would say to him, 'that much trodden territory
+becomes neutral?' and he would smile and say, 'you are generous.'"
+
+Maurice was looking into the fire.
+
+"Poor little Paula," he said. "But you were his only wife."
+
+"Yes," she said, "a law-given copyright."
+
+"Paula," he said, "will you do something for me?"
+
+"I wonder. There are surely no somethings where we are concerned."
+
+"I want you to describe several dresses to me. Your own perfect divine
+dresses. I want them for my book."
+
+"So I am to be made use of, am I?"
+
+Her eyes were flashing.
+
+He was not looking at her.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am going to steal some of your genius."
+
+She had left him. He was not surprised. She never said "Good-night."
+
+The next day she had gone--very early, leaving no address, no letter.
+
+She had, he heard, left his box of flowers at the village infirmary. He
+knew that that day it was to have been full of verbena, sweet geranium,
+sweet briar, thyme, myrtle, lavender and single roses....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marthe had insisted that he should come with her to Lally. He was
+feeling foolish and fascinated--dressing was evidently a religion with
+the most solemn rites in the world. The gravity and concentration of
+every one astounded him--the firm vendeuse refusing to allow her cliente
+any freedom of choice. The pathetic cliente pining in vain for forbidden
+fruit--the hopelessly ugly and unrewarding, who alone were permitted to
+follow their fancies. Patterns were discussed in hushed but intense
+undertones, faint but all-important modifications were offered by the
+vendeuse to bridge the gulf between the figures of the mannequins and
+those of the clients. The brave longing of a squat pigeon to have the
+model reproduced "textuellement" was resolutely suppressed.
+
+Marthe was discussing her vendeuse's child....
+
+And then suddenly Maurice saw Madame Marly. She was without a hat and
+scattering her terrified staff with her eye.
+
+She came straight to him, her voice was mocking.
+
+"Maintenant, je peux donner des renseignements � Monsieur."
+
+"I did not know," he blurted, "I had no idea," and then as the ultimate
+significance of their meeting disentangled itself from the immediate
+embarrassment,
+
+"Thank God, I have found you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mlle. de Marveau married the Comte de C�ly.
+
+The Comtesse de C�ly wanted an escape and became Madame Lalli.
+
+Madame Lalli wanted an escape and became Madame Marly--for Paula was
+always Paula.
+
+And then she met Maurice and her youth. Twenty-five years of age and
+experience and disappointment fell from her. But to keep her great
+illusion she offered her big resistance....
+
+And then the tiny knife turned in the tiny wound. The unconscious
+buzzing machine touched the exposed nerve--the silly, absurd, irrelevant
+name.
+
+The lover in pursuit of the beloved became the novelist examining the
+dressmaker, seeking for information. When professional meets
+professional.
+
+This time she capitulated for she ran away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Maurice wrote to her.
+
+"Paula, I love you. I loved you always. I loved you invulnerable, wise,
+fortified beyond the wiles of men. How much more do I love you now with
+your one weak spot--so weak, so absurd that it can only be kissed, and
+laughed at and adored.
+
+"Paula, my own, the twenty-five years have never existed. There is only
+one immortal moment--and that is to come.
+
+"Beloved, best beloved, only beloved, I want you so badly.
+
+"MAURICE.
+
+"Besides, you have got to describe me several dresses for my new book."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+AULD LANG SYNE
+
+[_To HAROLD NICOLSON_]
+
+
+It was delightful to be back in England after two and a half years. Two
+and a half years of India, of pomp and circumstance and being envied, of
+heat and homesickness and loneliness. How starved she had felt--starved
+of little intellectual coteries with their huge intellectual
+sensations--starved of new books and old pictures and music, of moss
+roses and primroses and bluebell woods, starved even into the
+selfishness of coming home, urged away by Robert, who did not know how
+to be selfish. Thinking of him made her feel very tender and very small.
+His iron public spirit, his inevitable devotion to duty, unconscious and
+instinctive and uncensorious, combined with a guilty sense that her
+youth and beauty had been uprooted by him, and put into a dusty distant
+soil. He was more convinced than any one of the importance of books and
+music and intellectual interests (he never read and did not know one
+note from another) because they were important to her and had therefore
+received a consecration they could never have had by merely being
+important to him. It was all so very simple--What she admired was
+beautiful; what she laughed at was funny; what she loved was divine--And
+she belonged to him--Robert. It was a miracle that found him every night
+on his knees in humble gratitude. She had, he thought, been so
+wonderfully good, walking on his red baize carpets as if they were
+fields of flowers, learning Sanscrit with passion and pretending, with
+what seemed to him complete success, and to them, absolute failure, that
+she liked Anglo-Indian women. When one by one his staff were
+incapacitated by love, he never complained. It made them of course
+useless, but how could they help falling in love with her? It would have
+been so unnatural if they had not. And when she told him--and to do her
+justice she knew that she was telling him the truth--that she was not
+worthy to do up his shoe laces--he would laugh and kiss her hand and
+send up a little internal prayer to God to be able to do something to
+deserve his wife.
+
+No wonder he was always urging her to go home--haunted as he was by the
+feeling of having put her in a prison and, no wonder, not having his
+iron character, she had finally succumbed--as she so often succumbed to
+his unselfishness.
+
+How she was loving England! The wet, heavy air--the sky curtained with
+clouds--the drenched leaves--the saturated flowers--the damp breathing
+earth--the distant lethargic sun. She could feel a pulse in the sopping
+soil and her heart beat with it.
+
+Finding her friends too was such an adventure. What struck her most
+about them was that they seemed so stationary. There they were, just as
+she had left them, doing the same things, thinking the same things,
+saying the same things--fixed points with their lives revolving round
+them, seeming to have lost the capacity for independent motion.
+
+She and Robert were not like that. Thank God, they were still pilgrims.
+After all, her life had been a big spacious thing in spite of India,
+because of India and, even more, because of Robert. Only she did not
+want to think about it now. Just to go on repeating to herself: "I'm at
+home. I'm in England."
+
+And she was going to stay with St. John. How excited she would have been
+four years ago. How her heart had beaten when she heard his footsteps,
+how she had thrilled when he had said "dear" to her. She remembered the
+care he had taken of her, the beautiful considerate devotion he had
+always shown her when she was longing so passionately for other things,
+trying with all her might and main to make him lose his head. _How_
+badly she had behaved. She could wonder now dispassionately whether he
+had _ever_ been in love with her. On the whole, she thought, he never
+had. If she had not been married--it was a silly "if." The most he had
+said was "you make things very difficult," not a very satisfactory
+avowal when you came to think it over calmly. But she remembered how it
+had thrilled her at the time--what a blank cheque of possibilities it
+had seemed. She remembered, too, the evening when he had talked
+seriously to her--very gently, very tenderly, very gravely. She had
+thought he was going to say, "I don't want to be made unhappy," and,
+instead, he had said, "I don't want you to be unhappy." That had been a
+nasty one. How she had lashed him with her tongue! What inexhaustible
+reserves of icy acid she had brought forward.
+
+She had tried to hurt him as much as ever she could. How hurt had he
+been? She wondered. It was all such very ancient history. And yet he had
+gone on being fond of her. Fonder and fonder--men were so odd.
+
+So many things had happened since then. She had been away and he had
+lost an uncle and inherited a property. And now she was going to stay
+with him. Last time they had met, two years ago, he had talked to her as
+if they had had a boy and girl affair thirty years before. She had been
+very much amused but she had hidden it; hiding your amusement was an
+essential part of being fond of St. John--a rule of the game, so to
+speak. That was one of the delightful things about him; to like him at
+all you had to be really devoted to him and when you had reached that
+stage, all of the qualities that would have been intolerable in other
+people became subtly lovable. Somehow they seemed to creep under your
+wing, compelling you to give them the protection of your own intimate
+understanding. It was impossible not to make pets of St. John's defects.
+Ariadne remembered the way he had always tried to keep her out of moral
+draughts, how he had hated to see her in a room with any one of a
+doubtful reputation, how her habit of taking off her hat in motors in
+towns got on his nerves.
+
+"But if it tires my head," she would say, and he would explain very
+seriously what an intimate gesture it was.
+
+Then as she always rested before dinner, people would come to tea with
+her in her bedroom. St. John didn't like it at all. There was to him
+something inherently disreputable about the horizontal. If she were too
+tired to sit up in an armchair, she was too tired to see any one--except
+him, of course, who understood her (which was just what he didn't do).
+
+"But my back does ache so easily. After all, if I were really ill you
+wouldn't mind."
+
+"That is different."
+
+"How ill do I have to be before I can abdicate the perpendicular in the
+presence of a young man?" He consoled himself with the thought that she
+was extremely, exceptionally innocent. She told him that thousands of
+people were extremely, exceptionally innocent. It was a fact which could
+never be explained to juries. St. John doubted it. He believed in a vast
+number of rules to which all of the people he liked and most of the
+people he knew were exceptions.
+
+The train drew up at the platform. Ariadne got out. The footman
+explained to her that his Lordship was so very sorry not to be able to
+come to the station, but he was attending a cattle show.
+
+"Of course," said Ariadne, and she felt it.
+
+She got into the brougham--it was so characteristic of St. John not to
+use a motor in the country--which had that delightful, almost forgotten,
+smell of broughams, and drove through an avenue of oaks up to the fine
+old Georgian house, dignified and mellow and lived in--a house proud of
+its cellar and its stables--of its linen and its silver--a house where
+men were men and women were women--where the master hunted and sat on
+the Bench, and the mistress embroidered and looked after the
+household--each having his separate functions and the one joint one of
+propagating the race.
+
+In the hall, St. John's housekeeper, in a black taffetas apron,
+welcomed her.
+
+"His Lordship would be most distressed not to have been there when her
+ladyship arrived, but the cattle show----"
+
+"Of course," said Ariadne, and hinted at a quite special awareness of
+the importance of Cattle Shows.
+
+Her bedroom was immense--there were lavender bags in all the drawers,
+and flowers on the dressing table, the fire was lit and there was
+boiling water in the shiny pale brass can. Her maid, the housekeeper
+explained, was sleeping in the dressing room. On the table by her bed
+was a glass box of biscuits, "The Wrong Box," "Omar Khayyam" and Lucas
+Malet's last novel.
+
+Ariadne was smiling with happiness. Talk about the joys of the
+unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding
+everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?
+There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+"It's I." (St. John never said "It's me.")
+
+She threw open the door.
+
+"Do come in," she said, and then, with a little stab of extra pleasure,
+she wondered if he would be shocked by her flimsy pink dressing gown and
+her bare feet.
+
+"St. John," she put out both her hands. "I _am_ happy to be here."
+
+He took them and held them quite tight, then he kissed them.
+
+"Little Ariadne," he said.
+
+It was, she supposed, a way of getting over the dressing gown.
+
+"You look younger than ever," he said.
+
+"It's my hair being down," she murmured.
+
+He asked her if she had had a good journey, and whether the housekeeper
+had seen that she had everything she wanted.
+
+She asked him if the cattle show had been a success.
+
+He said he really must dress for dinner, and so must she.
+
+"Ariadne," he put his hand on her arm, "it's good to have you here."
+
+There was an emotion welling up in his voice that surprised her. He
+turned his back and left the room rather hurriedly. She realised that he
+had almost kissed her. Would he have said, "I'm sorry, but you looked
+such a baby," or, "Forgive me, it was seeing you again after so long,"
+or, "Ariadne, can you forgive me? I lost my head."
+
+She plumped for the baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be
+going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain
+tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to
+topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could
+have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and
+never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the
+responsibility would have been his--thus obliterating the irritating
+daily spectacle of his untarnished blamelessness.
+
+Of course he had never been in love with her. She had always been buoyed
+up by little things she wouldn't even have noticed in some one she
+hadn't cared about. If there were acute disquieting moments when the
+troublante quality of her loveliness tossed him about
+unmercifully--weren't they moments that any stranger might go through
+sitting next to her at dinner? No--the truth always had been that he was
+really fond of her.
+
+"I'm glad now," she smiled to herself, "how lucky that we can't always
+sculpt our own relationships."
+
+She went down to dinner--in the huge hall full of armchairs and cushions
+and antlers and comfort St. John stood with his back to the fire smoking
+a cigarette which he threw into the grate when he saw her (St. John
+invariably threw away his cigarette when you came into the room and then
+asked your permission to light a new one. In her mind's eye Ariadne
+always saw him opening the door for his wife after a violent scene with
+her).
+
+"My dear," she said, "what a divine house."
+
+"The wing you are sleeping in was built by the fifth Lord....
+
+"The staircase was designed by....
+
+"The mantelpieces in the drawing room....
+
+"After dinner I will show you...."
+
+Dinner was announced.
+
+She tucked her hand under his arm.
+
+"Are you going to take me in to dinner, St. John?"
+
+"Of course," he smiled at her.
+
+The dining room was big enough to reduce the immense pieces of Georgian
+silver--beautiful they were--to reasonable proportions.
+
+St. John said there were some very fine pieces of Queen Anne which he
+would show her.
+
+"There was," she murmured, "nothing like Queen Anne."
+
+The attentiveness of the footman and even of the butler did not seem to
+her to be entirely confined to their wants.
+
+St. John asked her questions about India, which she answered as she
+answered travelling Europeans--correctly, concisely, and without any
+frills of vocabulary. It was quite possible, she reflected, that St.
+John wanted to know the answers to his questions. That was the worst of
+being abroad so much, you were always either trying to tell things it
+bored people to hear, or else they were determined to hear things that
+it bored you to tell. Her mind wandered to the curious tide-like quality
+of interest, the way it advanced and retreated in a conversation.
+
+St. John was explaining what a quiet life he had led. Perhaps, to her,
+it would have even seemed dull. (This to him was rhetorical paradox, and
+to her an obvious truth.) She did not know, he said, what it meant to
+feel that the land belonged to you--to see your own flowers growing,
+your own calves being born--to feel yourself surrounded by your own
+people, for whose happiness and welfare you were responsible.
+
+Ariadne said that inheritance was a sacred trust (it was wonderful how
+easy she found it to talk like St. John).
+
+"Yes," he said, "that is just it--a sacred trust. Why, I hardly ever go
+up to London now, and when I do, I feel quite homesick till I get here
+again."
+
+They got up from dinner.
+
+"Shall we go and sit in the library?" he said.
+
+They sat one on either side of the fire. She felt like an ancestress or
+a family portrait. The rosy haze of her tea-gown looked strange and
+alien fluttering in the huge leather armchair.
+
+"What a wisp you look," St. John said. She remembered how satisfactory
+her tininess had always been to him. "I think I could blow you away with
+a puff of smoke."
+
+"I am a limpet really," she laughed, "think how I have stuck to your
+life."
+
+"Thank God," he affirmed fervently.
+
+"Are you still a great flirt, St. John?"
+
+He looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You have surely not forgotten the way you played fast and loose with
+me?"
+
+"Ariadne," he was using the firm voice she knew so well, "you mustn't
+talk like that."
+
+"But you did. Don't you remember that dinner you gave when we went to
+the L----'s ball and you never danced with me till seventeen minutes
+past one?"
+
+"My dear, I was saving you up. The joy after all the duties."
+
+"You never told me so."
+
+"There were a lot of things I never told you."
+
+"I tried so hard to make you."
+
+"It was so hard not to."
+
+"St. John," she said, "the things you didn't tell me, were they true?"
+
+"Yes, they were true."
+
+He had got up and knelt by her chair.
+
+She put her hand on his head.
+
+"St. John," she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That
+he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That
+what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry
+had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection?
+Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than she had ever
+heard it before. Of course he had not been in love with her. She had
+never realised it as clearly as to-night. For a moment he put his face
+in her lap, then he kissed her hands--reverently, in memory of his great
+sacrifice.
+
+"May I smoke a cigarette?" he asked.
+
+"Please do."
+
+He went back to his chair.
+
+She was, he said, a wonderful friend.
+
+So, she said, was he.
+
+They talked about his family and her family--a little about their mutual
+friends and a lot about friends of his that she had never seen.
+
+They talked about furniture and gardens.
+
+There were, he said, a lot of subjects on which he wanted her advice.
+
+It was all very domestic, their two armchairs and the fire--the dying
+fire. He must, she supposed, be imagining that they were married, seeing
+her at the head of the table, in the family pew. She wondered if he
+would have let her re-set the family jewels. Perhaps his mind had
+reached the nursery. He was dreaming of children, his children, her
+children, their children.
+
+Dear St. John. She looked at him tenderly. She longed to explain what an
+unsuitable wife she would have made him.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" her voice was very gentle.
+
+"I was thinking of the cattle I bought to-day, and wondering what sort
+of fencing I should put up at the bottom of the drive. Ariadne, you
+remember how gregarious I used to be; well, you can't think how
+perfectly happy I am living here alone."
+
+Smiles were popping out of her face shamelessly. No sooner had she kept
+one out of her eyes than it reappeared on her lips.
+
+"Dear St. John," she said, "I do love you."
+
+He looked, she thought, a little alarmed.
+
+"Not like that, that is all over."
+
+"Quite over?"
+
+"Quite--are you glad?"
+
+"If it makes you happier," and then, "No, I'm damned if I'm glad."
+
+"Thank you, St. John," she was laughing a little.
+
+He looked puzzled, even rather disappointed.
+
+She had broken the rules and laughed.
+
+"How lucky you didn't say that to me four years ago."
+
+"Don't," he said sharply.
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+He was lighting her candle.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "you will choose the colour of the garden gates
+and advise me about the fencing."
+
+"That _will_ be fun."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"One is always cold after India."
+
+He took her to the door of her bedroom.
+
+"Good-night--God bless you," he said.
+
+She put her two hands on his shoulders and, bending forward, she kissed
+him lightly. It was a cruel way of showing him that she didn't care any
+more.
+
+"What a revengeful woman I am, punishing him after all these years," she
+thought.
+
+But he didn't see it like that.
+
+"I think I deserve her trust," he said to himself, and then his
+thoughts, let out to graze, returned to the subject of fences.
+
+"Robert," wrote Ariadne, "I am homesick for India."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+TWO TAXI DRIVES
+
+[_To PAUL MORAND_]
+
+I: SUNSHINE
+
+
+"Margaret, my dear, how delightful."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"But of course."
+
+"I always wonder," she murmured, "about accidental and sudden meetings.
+They are a sort of nervous shock and you always feel that you are
+looking for something that you've mislaid and that you don't seem able
+to find again until you've parted."
+
+"How depressing you are. Looking for mislaid intimacy, do you mean?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"When I saw you I simply felt--Margaret, thank God!"
+
+"Matthew, you old humbug."
+
+"And for you who specialise in intimacy and the unexpected, it is simply
+disgraceful."
+
+"But I don't."
+
+"You used to."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you a reformed character?"
+
+"A reformed experimentalist."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"Matthew, after all I _am_ glad to see you."
+
+"Then let us take a taxi and drive round the Bois."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You're not reformed at all. If you were, you would say, 'I've got to
+try on,' or, 'there are so many things I must do before lunch,' or 'I am
+only in Paris for such a short time.'"
+
+"They're all true."
+
+"Of course--that sort of thing is always true. The point is, is it
+relevant?"
+
+"Talking of specialists. Do you still specialise in the irrelevant?"
+
+"I have never understood what that word meant when applied to my
+activities. I have still kept my sense of proportion, if that is what
+you are driving at?"
+
+"And Virginia?"
+
+"Is still Virginia."
+
+"And you love her?"
+
+"Very often."
+
+"Not all the time?"
+
+"Certainly not. How then should I have my opportunities of discovering
+that I loved her?"
+
+"Does she like your method?"
+
+"I wonder. Sometimes it gets on her nerves."
+
+"Poor Virginia."
+
+"It is ridiculous to pity Virginia. Every one adores her and she meddles
+about in people's lives to her heart's content."
+
+"I always pity women who care for charming men."
+
+"Why--because charming men are fickle?"
+
+"No, because they are vulnerable."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"Charm is the dragon's blood."
+
+"But the leaf always falls somewhere."
+
+"And the weak spot is vanity--which is no use to one at all."
+
+"By the way, how is Michael, talking of charming men. Or, were we
+talking about them?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Margaret, I don't like Michael."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He is too complete."
+
+"Do you usually tell women that you don't like their husbands?"
+
+"No, they usually tell it to me."
+
+"Is that what you suggest that I am doing?"
+
+"Margaret, please. You know I didn't mean that. It was just an idiotic
+jeu de mots."
+
+"Matthew, be careful; if you are serious you will turn my head."
+
+"I would love to turn your head."
+
+"Why is it that you always make me indiscreet?"
+
+"I suppose that I inspire people with the happy illusion that I am not
+going to take what they say seriously."
+
+"I suppose that is it."
+
+"By the way, what was India like?"
+
+"Do you want to know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"I stayed with Ariadne."
+
+"Is she happy?"
+
+"Radiant."
+
+"Loving pomp?"
+
+"Loving Robert."
+
+"Dear me."
+
+"Robert is the most wonderful man in the world."
+
+"Well, he wanted to marry you; why didn't you marry him?"
+
+"I thought his pedestal such a precarious foothold in life."
+
+"If Ariadne can balance on it for a moment, it must be pretty firm."
+
+"It is a lovely pedestal. You can see for miles from it, and it is as
+comfortable as an armchair."
+
+"Ariadne always had a rare eye for a cushion."
+
+"Ariadne is a perfect wife."
+
+"Margaret, it is absolutely essential that I should see you once every
+twenty-four hours for the rest of my life. You will, therefore, not
+think me too matter-of-fact if I ask you your immediate plans?"
+
+"I am staying here three more days."
+
+"Damn--sixteen hours gone already, I am off to Deauville."
+
+"Then I am going back to London where it will all begin again."
+
+"I shall be there."
+
+"How grand it sounds to be a melodrama."
+
+"Margaret, do you know that I love you a great deal?"
+
+"I know that you are a great flirt."
+
+"Of course. That makes my real love so very exceptional and precious."
+
+"Does Virginia know that?"
+
+"Virginia almost understands everything, but of course she can't afford
+to admit it, or one would behave too impossibly."
+
+"Matthew, may I tell you something very serious?"
+
+"Yes, if you don't expect me to profit by it."
+
+"I used to understand almost everything, and I went on stretching and
+stretching till it broke, and now I understand nothing."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he twinkled at her, "perhaps I had better not
+marry Virginia."
+
+"Are you trying to make me unhappy?"
+
+"Margaret, dearest, I might even be serious if I thought that it would
+make you happy."
+
+"Good heavens, it's one, and I am lunching at one."
+
+"Margaret, promise never to mislay our intimacy again."
+
+"I promise."
+
+That evening there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Monsieur a fait dire que c'�tait un bouquet pour Madame."
+
+An immense bunch of balloons followed him into the room.
+
+"For Margaret who--in spite of everything, because of
+everything--understands everything."
+
+"Matthew," she wrote, "how young you make me."
+
+And then she murmured to herself:
+
+"Poor Virginia!"
+
+
+II: LAMPS
+
+"I love you so." The wheels of the taxi were the counterpoint to his
+voice.
+
+"What is the good of my turning away when every bit of him bites into my
+consciousness?" she thought.
+
+The road stretched ahead of them like cir� satin with a piping of
+lights. She had changed her position a little, restless under the
+constraint of his eyes. A lamp lit her up for him, her face white and
+drawn, her eyelids pulled over her eyes like a heavy curtain.
+
+"One feels that one could skate down the street," she murmured, "it
+looks like stuff worn thin with time and use--the shabby shiny surface
+of the night."
+
+On and on they went.
+
+"We can't get anywhere," he said.
+
+A lamp lit up her face.
+
+It looked so weary and impotent as if she had abdicated the uneven
+struggle with circumstances.
+
+On they raced, down the slippery ribbon of road.
+
+There was a bump and she fell towards him. He stretched out his arm and
+held her firm and secure. He wanted her to feel that it was a rampart
+and not an insidious outpost of passion quick to take advantage.
+
+"Let me kiss you once, for God's sake," his voice was harsh.
+
+She turned her face towards him. The passing lamp showed her resigned,
+pitying, tender.
+
+"Don't look like that," he said--sharp with the things he had wanted.
+
+"I'm sorry," her voice was velvety and comforting.
+
+Yet another lamp, there was a faint smile on her lips--breathed as it
+were from him. He huddled into his corner, hurt by her compassion.
+
+"I hate to see the moon," she said, "cynical and prying--an eavesdropper
+of a moon."
+
+Again a light gave him a fleeting vision of her--photographed on to his
+soul.
+
+Her deep dark eyes, heavy with distress, the corners of her mouth
+repudiating the misery of the moment. She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't," she said, "there is in life such an incoherent mass of
+interwoven strands. And perhaps something comes and tears them all to
+bits."
+
+Her voice was chanting--as if she were singing him a lullaby--then it
+became light again.
+
+"Wait till the next lamp," she said. "And you will see in my eyes the
+old laughter that you used to love."
+
+They turned down a side street and there were no more lights.
+
+Abruptly the taxi stopped.
+
+She got out. Her pale gold coat was a continuation of the moon.
+
+She turned her brooding eyes away from him.
+
+"Thank you for taking me home," she said; her voice had broken. She
+looked back--a smile turned on to her lips.
+
+He heard her latch key. The door opened and shut.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TOUCH OF SPRING
+
+[_To W.Y. TURNER_]
+
+
+The sun was streaming through the curtains silhouetting a strange
+bloated pattern on the chintz, breaking through an opening and cutting a
+deep yellow slit in the carpet. She lay in bed subconsciously awake,
+subconsciously asleep, her thoughts drifting into dreams, her limbs
+merging into one another. "This is happiness," she murmured to herself,
+and feeling consciousness invade her, she clutched at the perfect
+moment, and it was gone.
+
+Smiling at her defeat she stretched herself luxuriously like a cat and
+poked her toes out into a cool expanse of sheet.
+
+"It is nice," she thought, "to have the whole bed to myself."
+
+She curled herself up and lay for a few moments watching the sun
+catching little patches of air and turning them into rainbow dust. Then
+she rang. Her maid let in such a flood of light that she was forced to
+shade her eyes. An unabashed cuckoo broke into the chorus of birds,
+glorying in being a solo part and despising them for mixing and
+intertwining their notes.
+
+She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug;
+without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping
+like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of
+the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown--a tingling
+quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay
+on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking
+across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass.
+
+Smiling intimately to herself she got into her bath, wondering vaguely
+at the miracle of water, enjoying impersonally the cool whiteness of her
+body, doing tricks of perspective with her arms and legs.
+
+She dressed slowly with indolent rhythmical movements, indifferently
+aware of her effortless inevitable perfection.
+
+Even more slowly she walked down the staircase out through the open
+window on to the grey terrace. Somehow she felt that she was violating
+the morning, forcing the human on to the divine. Sipping the day she
+walked towards the almonds with their pink blush of blossom bursting
+through the brown; turning round her head she saw the double cherry, its
+branches nearly breaking under their load of snow. And at the roots of
+every tree uninvited primroses and violets were crowding out the earth.
+
+She followed the winding terraces towards the gleaming river, past
+fluttering daffodils and wandering narcissi, over riotous anemones and
+bright sturdy scyll�, shaking showers of diamonds off the grasses as she
+went.
+
+The river lay like a long satin streamer, a curling ribbon dropped on
+the meadows. And everywhere, hidden and vibrating, was an urgency of
+life: buds bursting into blossom, birds bursting into flight.
+
+Gradually the veil was lifting from the morning, the sun was rubbing the
+bloom off it as a child rubs sleep from his eyes.
+
+She retraced her steps, putting down her feet with the delicate
+fastidiousness of a cat in order not to tread on a flower. "I'm alone
+with you," she said shyly and ecstatically to the day. Never before had
+she had the Spring to herself. Always there had been the children (now
+on a visit) dragging plans and occupations, games, picnics, and bicycles
+across the pure joy of living, or her husband like a violin very close
+to her ear tearing her nerves to shreds with poignant urgent beauty.
+
+Looking dispassionately at her life, it seemed to her a slum of human
+relationships, airless, over-crowded, a dusty arena where psychological
+acrobats perform by artificial light. And always that dragging of the
+general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the
+personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers
+prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning,
+feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to
+catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some human desire.
+
+This not being a wife, or a mother, or a friend, or a beloved, or even
+herself, but a tiny part of the universal, this surely was happiness. To
+be at one with the morning, to belong to this frontierless world of
+nature, to be coaxed into flower by the sun, to be a strand in some
+unknown design, how much better than the weary steering of your life
+between the Scylla of your ardent futile longings and the Charybdis of
+some senseless malignant providence.
+
+She took her lunch into the wood. The bluebells were still in bud and
+hadn't yet swept everything before them in a headlong rush of waves that
+never broke. She sat in an open space on a patch of velvety moss,
+surrounded by tree trunks and waving windflowers and peeping primroses
+and violets, all diffident forerunners of Spring, shyly enjoying the sun
+before being submerged in that all-conquering flood of blue.
+
+She caressed the ground with her hand and watched little gusts of wind
+play hide and seek with the sun. "I don't believe I've ever been alone
+before," she thought, and she stretched out her arms into the air,
+initiating them into freedom.
+
+Gradually the sun began to sink, throwing a riotous tangle of crimson
+and gold streamers to salute the earth. "They are hauling down the flag
+of my perfect day," she thought with a stab of poignant sorrow.
+
+The sky became the colour of a primrose stalk and as transparent as
+green glass. Before touching the horizon it dissolved into violet
+powder. The colour was being blotted out of everything; one after
+another the flowers went out like lights; only the white cherry seemed
+phosphorescent in the gathering darkness. A thick white mist was
+relentlessly invading everything, climbing higher and higher, enveloping
+her in its cold, wet clutches.
+
+Bewildered and miserable, she struggled forward through the extinguished
+beauty of the world. A thin white sickle of a moon painted on the sky
+looked cynically down at her. Stumbling, shivering, she hurried blindly
+along.
+
+The big stone hall was flickering in the blaze of an immense fire,
+peopled with strange, unreal, clustering shadows. In front of it stood a
+man in a fur coat. He turned towards her with outstretched arms.
+
+"My darling, what have you been doing out without a coat? Look at your
+hair all white with mist and your sopping dress. I can't trust you to
+look after yourself for one day, can I?"
+
+She looked at him as if he were a ghost. A look of blankness and horror.
+
+He gathered her up and carried her to her bedroom. Putting her in a
+chair beside the fire he knelt down and pulled off her shoes and
+stockings.
+
+She felt as if something were breaking inside her. Cold unrelieving
+tears were running down her face.
+
+He was kissing her hands and her feet, murmuring little caresses,
+enveloping her in the glow of his love. And still she couldn't feel any
+warmer.
+
+Putting his arms tight round her he held her close to him, her cold wet
+face nestling in his neck.
+
+"I shall never leave you alone again," he whispered passionately, but to
+his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground with a thud.
+
+At that moment her old maid came in. "Poor wee thing," she said, "don't
+you be worrying and fretting yourself. It's just a touch of the Spring."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+FIDO AND PONTO
+
+
+Fido was a Dalmatian--of the race described by some as blotting paper
+and by others as plum pudding dogs. Every line of his body had been
+formed by hundreds of years of tradition. You can find his ancestors in
+tapestries and petit point in Italian primitives and Flemish family
+groups, nestling in voluminous satin petticoats, or running at the heels
+of skating children--moving in sedate indifference beside the cort�ge of
+a pope, or barking in gay derision at the tidy Dutch snow. Not "a dog"
+or "the dog" but "dog" unspecified and absolute. True, till 1700 it was
+largely a matter of silhouette, the lissom outline was there, but with a
+certain variety of colouring. Then the 18th century stepped in and made
+spots de rigueur--Dalmatians invaded new territory. They conquered the
+kingdom of china and occupied a commanding position in coaching prints.
+An unaccompanied post chaise, deplorable in life, because unknown in
+art, and the expression "carriage dog" came into use for the first time.
+
+The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and
+when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart
+race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly
+mother of strong and hideous children--progress. Motors were invented.
+
+If machinery had a conscience, what a procession of ghosts would it not
+be haunted by--ghosts of white fingers and humming spinning wheels,
+ghosts of parasols--stiff pagodas of taffetas or rippling fountains of
+lace--ghosts of victorias and barouches and tandems--ghosts of spotted
+streaks of lightning bounding forward with the grace of cats and the
+speed of Derby winners, capering with fastidious frivolity between
+yellow wheels.
+
+Dalmatians, console yourselves, you are in good company. Beside you
+walks the ghost of civilisation herself--surrounded by the phantom forms
+of courtesy and leisure and all the lost company of the divine
+superfluous.
+
+Cause and effect, demand and supply, where does the vicious circle begin
+and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside
+in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with
+transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down
+their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world
+that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained--to die of a broken
+heart.
+
+When I first saw him, he was a puppy--a thin lanky puppy, waiting to be
+filled in by life, a mere sketch of the masterpiece he was to become.
+Even in those days he had heavy black charmeuse ears, marvellous thick
+rich satin they were, and tiny dark rims to his eyes--a setting of
+pencilled shadow. How am I to describe his spots? The wonderful
+distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched
+neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the
+looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves
+into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.
+
+To see him move was to see motion made concrete--to see him run was to
+realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being
+a human.
+
+At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his
+whiteness. His bark was low and deep and resonant--a church bell of a
+bark--it reminded [Transcriber's note: original reads 'remainded'] you
+less of a 'cello than all 'cellos--except M. Casal's--remind you of a
+bark.
+
+He had the divine irrelevant grace of a cat. Always he was showing off,
+practising his paws, curling and stretching and pirouetting, letting
+himself go like an arrow out of a bow, circling on the lawn like a
+swallow above water, giving you daily a thousand illustrations of how
+much you would have lost by only having 100 masterpieces in bronze of
+him.
+
+Living with Fido was a daily revelation of absolute beauty. He was the
+key to the secret of Phidias and Ucello Pascal and Mozart.
+
+But he was alive, warm and gay and moody--joyous and absurd--full of
+little confiding gestures--a nose pressed under one's chin, or a paw
+laid in alluring appeal on one's hand. Withal he was detached with the
+detachment of his separate universe--a divine world of smells and sounds
+and ever new adventurous possibilities, unspoilt by memory and
+untarnished by experience.
+
+Dogs are the best company in the world--I would watch Fido abandoning
+himself to each moment of the day, the victim or the hero of a hundred
+impulses, torn by competing smells and sounds as we are torn by
+overlapping warring emotions and ambitions.
+
+And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open
+eye and when you said "Fido" his ears would answer you, taut with
+response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is
+there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry,
+distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it--a hypnotic
+conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre.
+
+Fido was a daily, hourly delight.
+
+I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and
+realise--with fresh acuteness--his infinite variety. There was to me
+something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very
+perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical
+masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied
+revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love
+gives mortality to everything.
+
+Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer
+trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His
+heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged
+his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie
+there indifferent to my trembling caresses.
+
+Fido died.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted.
+Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like
+tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated
+prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and
+seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a
+creation of the Gods.
+
+If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would
+avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing
+machine reaches the hidden nerve.
+
+"Don't you like dogs?" people would say.
+
+LIKE!
+
+"No!" I would answer.
+
+"How strange. I adore animals."
+
+ADORE!
+
+Oh the verbs of the untouched. And then, in spite of everything, because
+of everything, a Dalmatian once more invaded my life--the life that I
+had so resolutely determined never again to expose to any dog. What is
+invulnerability but a pis-aller? Which of us, given the choice between
+perfect peace and imperfect love would hesitate for one moment?
+
+When Providence gave me Ponto I accepted him with hungry passion, with
+nervous propitiatory prayers to the Gods.
+
+He was a stray dog, masterless and collarless, an erring emigr� of
+civilisation and he came to me. At first I did not dare look--my heart
+was beating so fast. I was frightened of being radiant. I was frightened
+of being miserable.
+
+And then I turned to him. He was bigger than Fido, with longer, stronger
+legs. His ears were not quite black, there were two little white spots
+on them, his eyes were not set in pencilled rims. But he was beautiful,
+as beautiful as a Greek athlete--to see him run was to see the Olympic
+games, and in the house he would curl and stretch and tangle up his
+paws, and put his head on my lap and reassure me with his eyes.
+
+Once more I lived with motion made concrete, with beauty made
+absolute--once more a wagging tail brought the inexhaustible dot of
+gaiety.
+
+Ponto had finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense
+of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a
+Dalmatian, privilege entails certain obligations.
+
+Perhaps he lacked something of Fido's moody charm, of his frivolous
+pathos, of his absurd joyousness, of his enchanting vanity.
+
+Perhaps it was just Fido's youth that he lacked, and his
+irresponsibility. There was a certain gravity about Ponto--a perfect
+dignity. His fastidiousness had gone beyond the stage of selections, and
+had reached the stage of exclusions. But he never lost his manners, or
+his manner.
+
+Always he said "Good-morning," and "Good-night." If I was embarrassed,
+or worried, he would pretend not to notice it, but if I was happy, or
+sad, he would show his sympathy in a hundred ways--putting his head on
+my lap, or cutting absurd capers to distract my mind.
+
+And then one day I went away.
+
+I told Ponto when I said good-bye to him that it would be some time
+before I saw him again.
+
+How was I to explain partings to him? The monstrous r�le that geography
+plays in our lives? I just told him that I loved him, that his image was
+in my heart, that our separation was only the preparation of a glorious
+meeting when old-remembered delights would merge into newly discovered
+ones.
+
+He listened to me while I stroked his heavy charmeuse ears. He licked my
+hand, knowing that with my whispering words, I was trying to console
+myself as well as him.
+
+Then I left him quickly.
+
+They wrote to me that he had disappeared.
+
+They wrote to me that his master had reclaimed him.
+
+But I know that he is mine.
+
+For I have made a great discovery.
+
+What I love belongs to me. Not the chairs and tables in my house, but
+the masterpieces of the world.
+
+It is only a question of loving them enough.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    P {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
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+	margin-bottom: 1em;
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+
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+    .content2 {font-style: italic; margin-left: 2em;}
+    .content3 {font-size: smaller; margin-left: 4em;}
+
+    ins.correction {
+		text-decoration:none;
+		border-bottom: thin dotted gray;}
+
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+
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+
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+   </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Balloons
+
+Author: Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2005 [EBook #15156]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLOONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kathryn Lybarger and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>BALLOONS</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ELIZABETH BIBESCO</h2>
+
+<h4><i>Author of &quot;I Have Only Myself to Blame,&quot; etc.</i></h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h6>NEW YORK<br />
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</h6>
+
+<h4>1922</h4>
+
+<h6>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">I</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#I">Haven</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Clarence Day, Jr.</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">II</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#II">Two Paris Episodes</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Anthony Asquith</div>
+    <div class="content3"><a href="#IIa">I: THE STORY OF A COAT</a></div>
+    <div class="content3"><a href="#IIb">II: BALLOONS</a></div>
+   </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">III</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#III">Courtship</a></div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">IV</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1">
+      <a href="#IV">&quot;Do You Remember...?&quot;</a>
+    </div>
+    <div class="content2">To Leslie Hartley</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">V</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#V">The Martyr</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To H.G. Wells</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">VI</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#VI">A Motor</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Alice Longworth</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">VII</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#VII">The Masterpiece</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Harold Child</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">VIII</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#VIII">Tea Time</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Sylvester Gates</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">IX</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#IX">The End</a></div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">X</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#X">Misunderstood</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To John Maynard Keynes</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XI</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XI">Counterpoint</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XII</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XII">Villegiatura</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Marcel Proust</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XIII</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XIII">Auld Lang Syne</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Harold Nicolson</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XIV</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XIV">Two Taxi Drives</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To Paul Morand</div>
+    <div class="content3"><a href="#XIVa">I: SUNSHINE</a></div>
+    <div class="content3"><a href="#XIVb">II: LAMPS</a></div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XV</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XV">A Touch of Spring</a></div>
+    <div class="content2">To W.Y. Turner</div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="chapnum">XVI</td>
+  <td>
+    <div class="content1"><a href="#XVI">Fido And Ponto</a></div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>BALLOONS</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="I"></a>
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3>HAVEN</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Clarence Day, Jr.</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>&quot;You should only,&quot; we are told, &quot;wear white in early youth and old age.
+It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no
+longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
+Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
+winter, &quot;Avoid wet feet and germs.&quot; In spite of both, we are still
+subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.</p>
+
+<p>But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
+Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the
+grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
+knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace
+of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the operation!</p>
+
+<p>It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all
+is difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl with
+bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All the
+young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories or
+bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, &quot;Well, I never!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
+Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
+impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime pinnacle of
+thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of untidiness, of
+unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three ingredients
+compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True, her cheeks
+lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent
+whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food,
+ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss
+Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.</p>
+
+<p>She discovered that men were her only interest&mdash;probably she had always
+known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was
+glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
+belonged to that strange, tropical species&mdash;the other sex.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
+&quot;what men liked in a woman.&quot; It was, it appeared, necessary to be
+bright&mdash;relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
+which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
+necessary to have &quot;something to say for yourself&quot; which in Miss Wilcox's
+hands, meant a series of pert tu quoques of the &quot;you're another&quot;
+variety. Her two other axioms, &quot;Don't let them see that you care for
+them&quot; and &quot;feed the beasts,&quot; were alas! never put to the test as no man
+had ever considered the possibility of being loved by Miss Wilcox and
+the feeding stage had, in consequence, never been reached.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in defence of her theses, Miss Wilcox was rough-toughed in
+public, while in private, she studied recipes and articles on cooking.
+As hope gradually began to give way to experience, Miss Wilcox came to
+the conclusion that she frightened men off. They regarded her, she
+imagined, as cold and indifferent and unapproachable. &quot;I don't cheapen
+myself,&quot; she would say, forgetting her conservatory days. In her heart
+of hearts, she imagined herself in humble surrender, laying her strong
+personality at the feet of a still stronger one and being gently lifted
+up on to a pedestal. It was curious, she thought, that her wonderful,
+unique gift of tenderness should go unperceived. But how is one to show
+that one is tender? It is so difficult for a maiden lady, living alone.
+She saw visions of a huge man with whimsical, smiling eyes, who after
+seeing her two or three times would call at her cottage. He would stand
+in the door and simply say, &quot;Ellen,&quot; and she would put her head on his
+shoulder and cry gently while he stroked her hair. &quot;Does my loving you
+make you sad, little one?&quot; he would say, and she would answer, &quot;No, no,
+they are tears of happiness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wilcox thought it would be delightful to be called &quot;little one.&quot;
+And then, rather nervously and tremulously, she would murmur, &quot;I am
+afraid I am not very beautiful,&quot; and he would laugh a deep, joyous laugh
+and say, &quot;To me, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But it never happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without
+consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took
+advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop
+in to tea.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to learn lawn-tennis and chess, but driving a ball into a net
+and studying problems in the Sunday papers becomes very monotonous. It
+was extraordinary how little provision life seemed to have made for
+superior people with fastidious tastes, whereas an empty head and a
+pretty face conquers the world! Miss Wilcox was very proud of the
+epigram, &quot;empty heads and pretty faces.&quot; She used it frequently, more
+in sorrow than in anger. Vera was an excellent example. She was
+incapable of &quot;conducting a conversation,&quot; she never read a book, but
+simply because her eyes sparkled and somehow or other, she always
+reminded you of a Shepperson drawing, she was invariably surrounded by a
+host of adorers. She was indifferent to the axioms, &quot;boys will be boys&quot;
+and &quot;gentlemen are different.&quot; In her philosophy, &quot;girls would be boys&quot;
+and the difference between the sexes was simply one of what you might
+and might not do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A positive savage,&quot; Miss Wilcox would explain and then, &quot;You should be
+more womanly, dear; men like a womanly woman.&quot; And Vera's eyes would
+sparkle maliciously, for men undoubtedly did like Vera.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know at what moment in life, if ever, we realise that we are
+neither George Sands nor Juliets. Of course, if we are not beautiful, we
+recognise early that beauty is nothing. What are features? The only
+thing that matters is to have charm and expression. Then comes that
+horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism. Is it possible that, though
+we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either? That we will have to
+go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to
+the triumphantly ugly? Miss Wilcox knew that she was not exactly
+clever. But after all, what is prettiness and &quot;men don't like clever
+women.&quot; So she consoled herself with the thought that though her manner
+&quot;permitted no liberties,&quot; the warm tenderness of her true nature must be
+apparent to the really discerning.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Miss Wilcox! She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and
+lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof. She would have liked to have been
+seductive and a little wicked, but she had found it easier to be
+dignified and very good. Easier but no more satisfactory. Evidently
+charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe. A
+dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.</p>
+
+<p>Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox. Lady Mary (Vera's mother) was always
+asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all
+sorts. On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the
+curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite
+and almost guilty pleasure to her. Was it, she wondered, altogether fair
+to let him think that Mr. Simpson loved her? But she did enjoy it so
+much, the nervous agonising sense of expectancy and then the sudden hot
+blush. &quot;Their little secret,&quot; Sir Harry called it and though, of course,
+it was very wicked of her to let him continue under a misapprehension,
+it was so difficult to clear the matter up, as, the more she protested,
+the more confused she became, the more he was bound to think that there
+was something in it.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Miss Wilcox, battling with her conscience when Mr. Simpson's
+passion was an invention of Vera's to whom old maids and curates were
+simply stage properties. Vera with her long legs and her laughing eyes
+and her happy, unimaginative youth&mdash;how was she to know that the
+Simpsons of life stand for romance and mystery and longings unachieved?
+To some people the impossible is impossible. One fine day they wake up
+in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands
+and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wilcox was not like that. She couldn't settle down to decorating
+the church and organising village entertainments. She woke up every
+morning sure that something was going to happen and went to bed every
+night dissatisfied in proportion to her confidence.</p>
+
+<p>And then, quite close together, two things did happen. Miss Wilcox was
+left a small fortune and Vera became engaged to be married.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding, of course, was a great dramatic event. The preparations
+engulfed everybody. What flowers should the triumphal arches be made of
+and were the fair or the dark bridesmaids to be considered in the
+bridesmaids' dresses? Miss Wilcox gave her advice freely and tied cards
+on to presents but she felt unaccountably depressed. This, of course,
+was because dear little Vera whom she had known since a child, whom she
+had loved as a child, was leaving them and plunging into this strange,
+unknown adventure. What an uncertain thing marriage, what an elusive
+thing happiness! At nights she would dream of white satin figures
+shrouded in white tulle veils, of shy, passionate bridegrooms and shy,
+radiant brides. Sometimes she would see Vera's face and sometimes her
+own and often in the morning, she would find her pillow wet. &quot;It will be
+you and Simpson next,&quot; Sir Harry teased her. But somehow the remark no
+longer pleased her and she no longer blushed.</p>
+
+<p>And then, one day she couldn't bear it any more. Without saying a word
+to any one she went to London. A thick orange fog greeted her, a
+wonderful, mysterious fog, creating immense prehistoric silhouettes, a
+fog which freed you from old accustomed sights and sounds so that your
+individuality seemed at last to be released and to belong exclusively to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Gratefully Miss Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to
+her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement
+peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last
+she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back
+again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely she
+pushed the door open. The brightness blinded her, the sudden warmth made
+her feel dizzy. Weakly she sat on a chair. A sympathetic salesman asked
+her if he could do anything for her. &quot;No, thank you,&quot; she murmured
+faintly, &quot;if I might sit here a moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gradually she recovered and walked out again. The fog was thicker than
+ever. The traffic had stopped. People bumped into her with muttered
+apologies. Hesitatingly, wearily, she walked along. At last, she reached
+another jeweller's. Firmly, quickly she walked in. How was she to ask
+for what she wanted?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I do for you, Madam?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up like a frightened animal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've lost my wedding ring,&quot; she stammered. &quot;It was a broad gold one.
+I&mdash;I don't want my husband to discover it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How easy it was after all.</p>
+
+<p>The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of
+rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering
+them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her.
+It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and
+quite unlike herself.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married
+ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There
+is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss
+Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. But
+still, she felt safer at the Ritz&mdash;there is something so conspicuous
+about a quiet hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The next day the fog had been cleared away and the sun, emerging after a
+day's rest, sparkled with refreshed gaiety. Miss Wilcox, in deep
+mourning, went out to buy new black clothes&mdash;lovely they were,
+intentionally, not accidentally black, filmy chiffons, rippling
+cr&ecirc;pe-de-chines, demure cashmeres, severe, perfect tailleurs. Here and
+there touches of snowy crepe gave a relief suitable to deep unhappiness
+and her widow's cap, low on the forehead, was the softest and most
+nun-like frame to her face. Seeing herself in the glass, Miss Wilcox
+blushed with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My husband was so fond of clothes,&quot; she murmured to the vendeuse with a
+break in her voice, &quot;and he always said that nothing became a woman like
+black.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There is a little village on the Seine. An old grey church nestles among
+the huddling houses. A platoon of poplars guards the river, and little
+pink almond bushes spring out of patches of violets. Miss Wilcox,
+calling herself Mrs. Demarest, lives in a charming old house surrounded
+by box hedges, paved paths lead through beds of old-fashioned
+sweet-scented flowers, stocks and wall flowers and mignonette and moss
+roses, lavender, myrtle, thyme and sweet geranium. Mr. Demarest, it
+appears, could not bear the wonderful new varieties of huge, smell-less
+blooms.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wilcox has never gone out of mourning, though she sometimes wears
+grey and mauve. Her gracious sweetness has made her much beloved in the
+village where her gentle presence is loved and honoured. She can often
+be seen bringing soup to some old invalid, or taking flowers to the
+church she loves to decorate. Her charity and her piety are revered by
+all. Sometimes in the evening she plays a game of cards with her
+neighbours or chess with the cur&eacute;. It is known that a rich man from the
+adjoining town proposed marriage to her, but she continues to mourn her
+late husband with profound devoted fidelity. She is too unselfish to
+force her grief on to others, but every one knows that her heart is
+broken. Sometimes she talks of her sorrow&mdash;very gently, very
+uncomplainingly, and there are always flowers in front of the photograph
+of her husband on her writing table. He must have been a magnificent
+man&mdash;huge, with whimsical smiling eyes. Every one in the village feels
+as if they had known him. They have heard so much about him. He had only
+seen Miss Wilcox three times when he walked into her cottage. Standing
+in the doorway&mdash;&quot;Ellen,&quot; he said, and she went to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose I knew it was for always,&quot; she explains gently. &quot;It has been
+a short always on earth&mdash;but so happy, so very happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All the girls of the village go to Mrs. Demarest before they marry. Her
+wise counsel and the radiant memory of her happiness lights them on
+their way.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have had everything,&quot; she says, &quot;and now I have found peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is the severity of suffering bravely borne. She has called her house
+&quot;Haven.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="II"></a><h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO PARIS EPISODES</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Anthony Asquith</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<a name="IIa"></a>
+<h5>I: THE STORY OF A COAT</h5>
+
+<p>&quot;Le Printemps a br&ucirc;l&eacute; cette nuit.&quot; The news greeted me when I was
+called. It had no special significance, but spread through my
+semi-consciousness into meaningless patterns. Then I woke up. &quot;Comme
+c'est terrible,&quot; I said, &quot;quelle chance que &ccedil;a s'est fait la nuit!&quot; I
+saw visions of leaping flames and angry reds reflected in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Then I remembered. It was at the Printemps that I had chosen my divine
+coat. They had promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The loveliest
+coat in the world&mdash;&quot;fum&eacute;e de Londres,&quot; the salesman had called it, and
+in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that ascends in
+solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too of silvery
+grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows. In shape it
+was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand, long with a
+flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky when the sun has
+set.</p>
+
+<p>I saw my coat giving new life to the dying flames. Tongues of fire were
+darting down the lines of silvery grey chenil, greedily eating up the
+smoky back-ground. Finally, a mass of ashes&mdash;purple-grey like their
+victim&mdash;was carried by the wind into the unknown. All day long my coat
+became more and more beautiful. The texture was solid smoke and the
+stripes were shafts of moonlight. How it shimmered through the mirage of
+my regrets.</p>
+
+<p>When I got home that afternoon I found a cardboard box. The inspector of
+the Printemps, knowing that I was leaving for England, had brought me a
+coat from the reserve stock which was not kept in the shop. Infinitely
+touched, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I wrote a love letter to
+the Printemps.</p>
+
+<p>Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
+white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
+purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
+coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more &quot;la cr&eacute;ation&quot; of the
+Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
+Resurrection is a dangerous thing.</p>
+
+<p>My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
+from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
+Life of Christ?</p>
+<br />
+
+<a name="IIb"></a>
+<h5>II: BALLOONS</h5>
+
+<p>All my life I have loved balloons&mdash;all balloons&mdash;the heavy English sort,
+immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light,
+gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of
+them. How well I remember when I was little, the colossal effort of
+blowing up the dark red, floppy India rubber until it got brighter and
+brighter and more and more transparent, though it always stayed opaque
+enough to hold the promise of still greater bigness. And then the
+crucial moment when ambition demanded an extra puff and a catastrophe
+became ever more imminent.</p>
+
+<p>And now, when I suddenly see a huge bunch of wonderful bloated tropical
+grapes, overpowering some old woman in the street, I feel so happy! In
+Paris, of course, they are quite different&mdash;balloons have much too much
+flavour to be international&mdash;they are smaller and lighter in colour and
+gayer and more reckless&mdash;they always look as if they were out on a
+spree, just waiting to break loose from the long string by which they
+are tied, in a huge multi-coloured sunshade, to a stick. There is
+something very independent about French balloons&mdash;you feel you couldn't
+make a pet of one.</p>
+
+<p>But I am telling you things you know already, instead of getting on with
+my story.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sort of spring day when all the buds look like feathers and
+the sun has been bathing in milk. I was walking down the Champs Elys&eacute;es,
+sniffing secret violets in the air and feeling as joyous as if the world
+were entirely full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by
+whom I would never see again. In the distance a barrel organ became more
+and more distinct and as I drew nearer and the noise grew louder, I
+wanted to dance and sing. It was in tune with my mood. A symbol of the
+crescendo of living.</p>
+
+<p>And then, in the distance, I saw Cousin Emily crawling towards me like a
+black beetle with her half-shut eyes that see everything except beauty
+and innocence. Though I avoided her and the day was as lovely as ever, I
+had become conscious that the world was inhabited and that there were
+people who didn't whistle&mdash;or want to whistle&mdash;in the streets.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to think of larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged
+back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver
+photograph frames. Then I had an idea. &quot;I will buy a balloon,&quot; I
+thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one
+like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright
+yellow one? White was charming too, and sailed up into the sky like a
+tight, round cloud&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I reached the Galleries Lafayette.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Des ballons, s'il vous plait. Joujoux,&quot; I added. I was told to go
+straight on, to turn to the right and the left, to go up three steps and
+down three steps&mdash;but my mind wandered as it always does when I am
+listening to directions that I have to follow. By an unseemly scramble I
+got into an over-crowded lift. I seemed to be treading on children and
+reclining on tight, upholstered bosoms. At random, I chose the third
+floor and found myself among a forest of lamps. Desperately determined
+not to risk another struggle for the lift, I tried to find the
+staircase. At last, after endless enquiries and&mdash;it seemed&mdash;going back
+five steps for every three I had gone forward, I reached the toy
+department. Breathless, bedraggled, hot and exhausted, I clutched the
+arm of the first saleswoman I saw. &quot;Des ballons, Madame,&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me with contempt, &quot;Les ballons, ca ne se vend pas, ca se
+donne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I was awed by the aristocratic magnificence of balloons.
+How superb, how reckless! Very humbly I appealed to her,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pouvez-vous, voulez-vous me donner un ballon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Les ballons, ca ne se donne pas apres cinq heures,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>I didn't press her. How could I? By how many thousands of years of
+tradition might not the habits of balloons have been fixed? Their lives
+were evidently strangely and remotely unlike our lives. Wearily I walked
+downstairs, not snubbed but humbled and a little awed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Half an hour later I was walking down the Champ Elys&eacute;es sniffing at the
+secret violets in the air. I had forgotten Cousin Emily and the world
+was full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by. Suddenly,
+at the other side of the street I saw a bursting sunshade of balloons,
+emerald and ruby, transparent white and thick, solid yellow, a birthday
+bouquet from a Titan to his lady. Reverently, lovingly, I looked at
+them, my heart full of joy, but I did not cross the street.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="III"></a><h2>III</h2>
+
+<h3>COURTSHIP</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;I do love yachting,&quot; she said, &quot;to see the sea change from aquamarines
+and diamonds to sapphires and emeralds, with thick unexpected streaks of
+turquoise. To sail away into the unknown, away from your own life&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was looking dreamily in front of her to the blue beyond the mimosa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sea is jolly,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To feel that you are leaving land behind you and your friends and your
+relations and your duties and what are called your pleasures. To be
+free,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's nothing like horses,&quot; he said. &quot;Their very smell does you good.
+An hour's gallop before breakfast in summer, a twenty minutes' run with
+the hounds in winter&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A week later they were engaged to be married. I wondered whether he
+would take to yachting or she to riding or both to golf.</p>
+
+<p>I didn't see them for five years. And then, I met her at Melton. She had
+taken a house for the winter. &quot;So he won,&quot; I reflected to myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you done much yachting lately?&quot; I asked her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yachting?&quot; she said, &quot;why it's my idea of hell. I'm the worst sailor in
+the world. A sea as calm as a pond finishes me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is your husband?&quot; I murmured weakly. &quot;Is he coming down here to
+hunt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tommy?&quot; she laughed. &quot;Why he's never known a horse from a cow.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="IV"></a><h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;DO YOU REMEMBER&mdash;&mdash;?&quot;</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Leslie Hartley</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>There are so many delightful things about being a bride besides actual
+happiness, little peaks of pleasure that gradually sink into the level
+of existence, unimportant, all-important things that never come again.
+To begin with, there is your wedding ring which keeps glistening up at
+you, unexpectedly making such an absurd difference, not only to the look
+of your hand but to everything else, as well. And there are your trunks,
+shiny and untravelled, with glaring new initials almost shouting at you,
+so very unlike other people's battered luggage with half obliterated
+labels sprawling over it.</p>
+
+<p>And trousseau clothes are quite unlike other clothes&mdash;not prettier,
+often uglier&mdash;but different. Your shoes and stockings match, not yet
+having begun that uneven race which, starting from the same mole, ends
+with a fawn-colored shoe and a grey blue stocking. Your hats go with
+your dresses and your sunshades with both. You have an appropriate
+garment for all occasions, instead of always being&mdash;as you once were
+and soon will become again&mdash;short of something. Altogether, there is no
+other word for it&mdash;you are equipped.</p>
+
+<p>And then you feel exhilarated and responsible&mdash;your jewels are still new
+and so is the strange, beautifully embroidered monogram on your
+handkerchiefs and underclothes. Also, for the first time in your life,
+you have a jet evening dress with a train and your maid calls you
+&quot;Madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lucy was extremely pleased about all of these things. She was pleased,
+too, to have married a foreigner, to be sailing away into a new milieu,
+where she would be surrounded by the strange exciting faces of her
+husband's friends. It would be delightful to have nothing to do, but
+make yourself liked, to be automatically disentangled from all of your
+own complicated, complicating relationships with nothing around you but
+a new world to conquer. And how thrilled and curious every one must be
+about her. What sort of a woman had succeeded in catching dear old Tony!
+Tony, who was so delightfully, so essentially, a man's man. There had
+been Vivian, of course, but no one quite knew the rights and the wrongs
+of that and it was over anyway. Tony was so deuced unsusceptible (Lucy
+prided herself on being able to think in English), unsophisticated, too,
+about women, but with a sense of self-preservation like an animal's. And
+now he had gone and married an American and a Bostonian. Americans, one
+knew, were heiresses and Bostonians were blue-stockings. The lady, it
+appeared, was not very rich, but of course, Tony would never have
+married for money. It was all very puzzling.</p>
+
+<p>And then, Lucy imagined herself walking into a room full of strange,
+curious faces and some one murmured, &quot;That is Tony's wife,&quot; and every
+one looked up. She was wearing a shimmering, silvery blue dress and she
+was looking her very, very best. An old lady told her that she ought
+still to be in school and a young man told her that she was a jolly
+lucky woman and Tony a jolly lucky man, by Jove.</p>
+
+<p>Lucy was sure that that was the way Englishmen talked.</p>
+
+<p>And on their way home, people agreed that they could understand any
+man's falling in love with her. Tony talked a lot about his men friends.
+Women meant nothing to him. He had, Lucy knew, once been engaged to a
+woman&mdash;Vivian, she had been called&mdash;rumour had woven a pattern of
+legends about it, but he had never seemed anxious to discuss it. People
+said he had behaved badly&mdash;but how was one to tell? Those things were
+always so complicated. Usually, every one ended by behaving badly. At
+any rate, the girl had made a brilliant marriage, which might or might
+not mean a broken heart. It was, Lucy thought tenderly, so
+characteristic of Tony to have sown such legitimate wild oats. An
+engagement contracted and broken off in gusty fits of honour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You look very lovely,&quot; he smiled at her.</p>
+
+<p>She was shimmering in silvery blue, her eyes like cloudy star sapphires,
+her hair like primroses and ashes.</p>
+
+<p>In the motor she leant against him, a discreet gentle pressure. She
+always gave you a feeling of delicately intertwined reticencies and
+avowals, a faint New England flavouring which she had never lost.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do hope they'll like me,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was a great success. Lucy loved her neighbours and her neighbours
+loved her, while secretly congratulating themselves on having always
+been right about Boston (which they had never visited and of which they
+knew nothing).</p>
+
+<p>After dinner a few guests trickled in for the tiny dance that was to
+follow. It was all very much as Lucy had imagined it, old ladies
+delighted by her youth, old men delighted by her prettiness. Every one
+saying that she was very un-American (by which they meant unlike the
+Americans they had known).</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, a hushed silence grabbed hold of all the various
+conversations. Tony got up. His hostess was saying, &quot;I want to present
+Mrs. Everill.&quot; Some one in a corner gave a little suppressed laugh,
+Lucy looked.</p>
+
+<p>She saw a thin, dark woman with charming irregular features and a figure
+which looked as if it had been put into her black velvet dress with a
+shoehorn, and she heard her say in a low voice which somehow seemed to
+creep inside shut parts of you, &quot;Tony and I are very old friends.&quot; They
+were coming straight to her and then, next thing she knew was that voice
+again, saying, &quot;Mrs. Everill, you must forgive me if I say that, for the
+moment, you are to me, just Tony's wife. But, of course, I know that to
+be that you must be a great many other things besides.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lucy knew that every one was looking at them, not at her, Lucy, the
+bride (and she had been so proud and happy&mdash;childishly happy&mdash;to be a
+bride), not at Tony, not even at Lady Dynevor, but at <i>them</i>, at the
+situation. It seemed to Lucy so indecent, so vulgar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will love Lucy, Vivian,&quot; Tony said quietly, and Lucy looked up at
+the charming, gracious apparition so dominant, with her beautifully
+friendly manner. Her eyes looked as if she could never find the bottom,
+as if tears were just going to well up and drown them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I shall,&quot; she said, and there was a little edge on her voice,
+as if it were going to break. That was the feeling she gave you, Lucy
+thought, of being on the brink of something, a tenseness like the moment
+when the conductor's baton is raised before you have been released by
+the music.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How ill you look,&quot; Tony was saying. Vivian laughed,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You always said that, do you remember&mdash;&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Conversation was buzzing again. Lucy turned to her neighbour. Through
+what he was saying, she could hear Tony&mdash;&quot;your white velvet dress&mdash;do
+you remember...?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She got up to dance. The room seemed to whirl round her while she stood
+quite still.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, we know all about Boston, Mrs. Everill,&quot; her partner was
+saying, &quot;it produces beans and Cabots and blue-stockings&mdash;and brides,&quot;
+he added, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Tony and Vivian were still sitting on their sofa. As she passed, she
+heard Vivian laugh, &quot;Do you remember?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The evening seemed to Lucy interminable. Tony was very good. He did his
+duty very nobly, dancing with every one, even his wife.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past one they went home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How charming Lady Dynevor is,&quot; Lucy murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charming?&quot; Tony looked puzzled. &quot;Vivian?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It obviously seemed to him an almost grotesquely irrelevant, inadequate
+word. And then, feeling that something was expected of him, &quot;She is a
+wonderful woman, loyal, faithful, a real friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is very pretty,&quot; Lucy said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pretty, is she? I hadn't noticed it.&quot; Again he seemed puzzled, as if it
+were really too difficult to connect up these absurd adjectives with
+Vivian. Then an idea occurred to him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not <i>jealous</i>, sweetheart, are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she lied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Vivian is&mdash;well, Vivian,&quot; he explained, making matters worse. And Lucy
+knew that if she had said &quot;beautiful, fascinating, majestic,&quot; if she had
+used all the superlatives in the world, they would have seemed to him
+equally irrelevant and inadequate. But Tony was very much in love with
+his wife and she knew it and soon, in his tender, whimsical, loving,
+teasing way, he had made her perfectly happy again.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing in front of her dressing-table, her cendre
+hair&mdash;shadows shot with sunlight&mdash;falling like a waterfall over her
+shoulders. With one hand she was combing it, with the other she fingered
+a bundle of snapshots taken on their honeymoon&mdash;lovely snapshots, full
+of sunshine and queer, characteristic positions and expressions. They
+might, she thought, have been taken by a loving detective.</p>
+
+<p>Tony came in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you remember,&quot; she said&mdash;and then, suddenly, with a wave of misery,
+she realised it. The phrase did not belong to her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="V"></a><h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MARTYR</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">H.G. Wells</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>I, myself, have always liked Delancey Woburn. To begin with, there is
+something so endearing about the way he displays his defects, never
+hiding them or tidying them away or covering them up. There they are for
+all the world to see, a reassuring shop window full of frank
+shortcomings. Besides, I never can resist triumphant vitality. Delancey
+is overflowing with joie de vivre, with curiosity, with a certainty of
+imminent adventure. If you say to him, &quot;I saw a policeman,&quot; his face
+lights up and so it would if you said &quot;I saw a dog,&quot; or a cat, or a
+donkey-cart. To him policemen and dogs and cats and donkey-carts are
+always just about to do something dramatic or absurd or unexpected. Nor
+is he discouraged by unfailing regularity in their behaviour. Faith is
+&quot;the evidence of things not seen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then, too, he is so very welcoming. Not, of course, that he makes
+you feel you are the only person in the world because a world with only
+one other person in it would be inconceivably horrible to him, but he
+does make you quite sure that he is most frightfully glad to see
+you&mdash;all the gladder because it is such a surprise. Delancey always
+makes a point of being surprised. Also, though he is invariably in a
+hurry&mdash;being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life&mdash;he as
+invariably turns round and walks with you, in your direction, to
+convince himself that having met you in Jermyn Street is an altogether
+unexpected and delightful adventure. And he never feels, as I always do,
+that a five minutes' conversation is a stupid, embarrassing thing, too
+long for mere civility and too short for anything else. The five minutes
+are filled to the brim and off he rushes again, leaving me just a little
+more tired and leisurely from the contact. Delancey is the life and soul
+of a party&mdash;or perhaps I should say the life and body. He likes eating
+and drinking and talking to women and talking to men and smoking and
+telling a story. And if he does address his neighbour a little as if she
+were a meeting at a bye-election, open air, he at any rate never
+addresses her as if she were a duty and no one had ever wanted to kiss
+her.</p>
+
+<p>To Delancey all women have had lovers and husbands and children and
+religious conversions and railway accidents. Old maids and clergymen's
+wives adore him.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know what it was that made him write originally. Perhaps it was
+his name&mdash;Delancey Woburn sounds like the author&mdash;or the hero&mdash;of a
+serial. Or it may have been that his exuberant desire for
+self-expression had burst through the four walls of practical
+professions. He had, I believe, considered the stage and the church.
+Journalism would have seemed to me the obvious outlet but he preferred
+literature. &quot;Creation is such <i>fun</i>,&quot; he would explain, beaming. And, of
+course, he was tremendously successful. Delancey was designed on a
+pattern of success.</p>
+
+<p>That was one of the obvious defects I was talking about. Delancey has
+missed his failures. He has fought and been defeated but he has never
+longed and been frustrated. In his case, romance is realism. He has only
+known happy endings.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally he is not an interesting writer. How could he be? And,
+naturally, he is a successful one. How could he help it? Delancey writes
+for magazines in England and America. I, myself, never read magazines,
+but occasionally he sends me one and every twenty stories (I think it is
+twenty) become a book. The English ones were about scapegraces and
+irresistible ne'er-do-wells, ancestral homes with frayed carpets and
+faded hangings in which penniless woman-haters (the last of a noble
+line) sit and brood, living alone with equally gruff, woman-hating
+family retainers. Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer,
+and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests of
+their own ultimate frustration.</p>
+
+<p>But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn't a
+market for ne'er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and
+dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as
+dangerous. No, America must have her special line and no one better than
+Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of
+Wall Street and serve at the right temperature.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't proud of his writing&mdash;or, rather, he wasn't proud of it with
+every one. In his heart of hearts, what he wanted was not the applause
+of the public, but the faith of a coterie, to be a martyr, misunderstood
+by the many, worshipped by the few. A Bloomsbury hero, a Chelsea King!
+&quot;We confess that as a writer Mr. Delancey Woburn is altogether too
+rarefied for our taste. His work is far too impregnated by the stamp of
+a tiny clique of rather self-conscious superintellectuals. Reading his
+books, we feel as if we had suddenly entered a room full of people who
+know one another very well. In other words, we feel out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What would not Delancey have given for a review that began like that!
+Instead of which the best that he could hope for in &quot;shorter notices&quot;
+would be an announcement that &quot;Mr. Woburn's many admirers will no doubt
+find his last book eminently to their taste. He provides a lavish supply
+of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Poor Delancey, his stories <i>did</i> sell so well! And there was his flat in
+Grafton Street with the beautiful new taffetas curtains and the cigars
+that had just arrived from Havana, with his own initials on.</p>
+
+<p>So from week to week he put off becoming an artist and one year (after a
+four-month love affair and two lacquer cabinets) he made a lecture tour
+in America.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it a success?&quot; I asked wearily (Delancey's success is always such a
+terribly foregone conclusion).</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tremendous,&quot; he beamed. &quot;I was careful to be a little dull because then
+they think they're learning something.&quot; But he was out of love, the flat
+was overcrowded, money continued to pour in and he knew terribly well
+that he was not making a contribution to contemporary literature.</p>
+
+<p>He had always assured me at intervals that some day he would write his
+&quot;real book&quot; but I think it was after his tour in America that the dream
+became a project. He burst in to tell me about it. Delancey always
+begins things with a sudden noisy rush.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte,&quot; he said, &quot;I have made up my mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It sounds very momentous,&quot; I teased. He decided years ago that I was
+grave, fastidious, whimsical, aloof and (I suspect) a little faded. I
+have long given up fighting my own battle (to be known) because I
+realise that Delancey never revises the passports given to old ideas.
+There is always, to him, something a little bit sacred about the
+accepted. &quot;I can't go on with it any longer,&quot; he explained.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on with what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My damned stories.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How ungrateful you are,&quot; I murmured, thinking of the lacquer cabinets,
+&quot;you have a market, you can command a price. Each of your love affairs
+is more magnificently studded with flowers than the last&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be quiet,&quot; he said. &quot;I came to you because I knew that you would
+understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are trying to blackmail me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do be serious,&quot; he pleaded. &quot;I am going to give all that up. I have
+determined to settle down and dedicate myself entirely to my book.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; I expostulated, &quot;have you thought of the yearning <i>Saturday
+Evening Post</i>, of the deserted <i>Strand</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have thought of everything,&quot; he said, &quot;I shall be sacrificing 5,000
+pounds a year, but what is 5,000 pounds a year?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the taffetas curtains and the cigars, but I answered quite
+truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see, Charlotte,&quot; he dropped the noble for the confidential, &quot;I have
+got things to say, things that are vital to me. I couldn't put them in
+my other work. How could I? It would have seemed&mdash;you will think me
+ridiculous&mdash;a kind of prostitution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they were clamouring for expression all the time. And I have kept
+them down till I couldn't keep them down any longer. Of course, I know
+my book won't be a success&mdash;a popular success, I mean&mdash;but it won't have
+been written for the multitude but for the few&mdash;the people who really
+care, who really understand. It may be even thought,&quot; there was
+exultation in his voice, &quot;dull.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;I think it is very brave of you&mdash;and quite right. Truly
+I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I shall take a tiny cottage in a fishing village in
+Devonshire,&quot; Delancey was as usual seeing things pictorially&mdash;bare
+white-washed walls, blue and white linen curtains and a pot of wall
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>A week later he came to see me again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When are you off to Devonshire?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have decided to stay here,&quot; he answered, &quot;there is a roar of life in
+London, a vibrating pulse, a muffled thunder.&quot; I began to be afraid that
+Delancey's book would be very bad indeed. It was, it appeared, to be a
+novel. &quot;Not exactly a novel,&quot; he explained, &quot;a large canvas with figures
+moving on a back-ground of world conditions.&quot; I thought of &quot;War and
+Peace&quot; and was silent. It doesn't matter being silent with Delancey
+because he doesn't notice it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want,&quot; he said, &quot;to picture the very earth in the agonies of labour
+giving birth to a new world.&quot; Later, the theme was (to my secret relief)
+narrowed down to England.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have changed my motif a little,&quot; he said. &quot;I simply want to portray
+the quicksilver of after-war conditions&mdash;England in transition.&quot; At this
+time Delancey seemed to me the least little tiny bit depressed. The
+income he was sacrificing rose (in his conversation) from 5,000 to 7,000
+pounds. He dined out less, avoided his club and Christie's. Also, he
+kept out of love. For ten years, Delancey had always been in love.
+Managed by him, it was a delightful state, ably presided over by head
+waiters and florists. It made, he once explained to me, all the
+difference to walking into a room.</p>
+
+<p>But everything was changed now. The masterpiece was a jealous god.
+Jealous and, I sometimes thought, apt to be a little tiresome. It had to
+be referred to so very deferentially, with such carefully serious
+respect. Also, it cast a shadow of gravity over Delancey&mdash;Delancey who
+was never meant to be a high priest, but rather a young man in white
+flannels, with a cigarette in his mouth, punting a young girl with a red
+sunshade&mdash;like an illustration to one of his own stories.</p>
+
+<p>Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely
+admit it) extremely exhausting. But never have my patience and endurance
+been more severely tested than during the year of Delancey's
+masterpiece. He finally decided that in the foreground, there was to be
+the clash of two human souls and in the background, the collision of two
+worlds&mdash;the old (pre-War) and the new. In fact, a partie carr&eacute;e of
+conflicts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You with your love of form,&quot; he explained to me, &quot;will appreciate the
+care I have given to the structure. It is,&quot; he added, &quot;difficult to
+mould vast masses of material.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As the months went by I began to be horribly afraid that Delancey's
+novel would be very, very long indeed. And even if nobody read it
+through, not even a reviewer, I should have to without skipping a word
+or a comma.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sentences,&quot; Delancey told me, &quot;are rather long. I find the
+semicolon very useful for cumulative effects.&quot; A vast array of words
+policed by semi-colons. I felt a little dizzy. Would they be able to
+keep order?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; he continued, &quot;the interest is very largely psychological,
+but I regard the book mainly as a document&mdash;a social document. The
+fiction of to-day is the history of to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed conclusive. The book could not have less than 700 pages. A
+social document with psychological interest and a double conflict. Why,
+it would be short at that. And then, one day, when Delancey's book had
+become to me a form of eternity, he arrived, breathless with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To all intents and purposes, it's finished,&quot; he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God,&quot; I murmured faintly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will be an awful loss to me,&quot; he stated mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't dead yet,&quot; I said with feeble jocularity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is sad to see your children leave you. To watch them step out into a
+cold, inhospitable world,&quot; he went on.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A warm, welcoming world,&quot; I amended dishonestly. &quot;You haven't told me
+what it is called yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't called anything. I want you to be its god-mother, Charlotte.
+What about 'Whither'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too like a pamphlet,&quot; I was glad to be on firm ground again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought about 'Fate's Laboratory,' but it isn't very rhythmical, is
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not very,&quot; I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The question mark after the 'Whither' would look nice on the cover,&quot; he
+reflected regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>I brightened. This was the old Delancey. The Delancey of the <i>Saturday
+Evening Post</i> and the <i>Strand</i>, of the taffetas curtains and the cottage
+in Devonshire. By my sudden glow of gladness I realised how much I had
+missed him. But I couldn't say, &quot;Dear, <i>dear</i> Delancey, please be your
+old self and never, never, whatever you do, write another 'good' book,&quot;
+so I confessed that a question mark <i>would</i> look very nice, but that I
+still thought that &quot;Whither&quot; sounded rather like a religious tract.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, we must think it over,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>A week later, he announced to me in a tone which indicated clearly that
+my opinion was only wanted if it was approval, &quot;I have decided to call
+my book 'Transition.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always like single word titles,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one will read it,&quot; he said. &quot;One bares one's soul to the public and
+they throw stones at it. But at any rate, now I can hold my head high.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I didn't laugh, but it was the effort of a lifetime. Dear Delancey was
+so very absurd as a self-made martyr. It was somehow impossible for him
+to give an impression of having been persecuted for righteousness'
+sake. His shiny, rosy face had never looked rounder, his trousers had
+never been more perfect or his shoes more polished. And there were still
+the same little outbursts of childish prosperity, his watch, his
+tie-pin, his links were all redolent of a vitality that had ever been
+just the least little bit blatant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Delancey,&quot; I said, &quot;I want you to have just the sort of success you
+want for yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; he said, wondering if I knew what I was talking about.</p>
+
+<p>And then, one day, a proof copy of Delancey's book arrived. I looked at
+the paper cover. It was bright orange with &quot;Transition&quot; slanting upwards
+in immense black letters. &quot;Very arresting,&quot; I could hear the publisher
+saying. Gingerly I unwrapped it. Underneath, it was sober black linen,
+with bright blue lettering still on the cross. I sat with it in my
+hands, feeling limp and will-less. But, at last, I pulled myself
+together. I read the dedication, &quot;To those who died.&quot; I saw that there
+were 600 pages, big pages crowded with words. And then, saying to
+myself, &quot;It is no good putting it off,&quot; I began to read. Delancey's book
+was certainly not at all like his stories. It was very nearly rather a
+good book and it was quite extraordinarily dull. The social structure
+played a r&ocirc;le of deadly relentless magnitude. It began (before the War)
+as an immense iron scaffolding and ended sprawling in the foreground,
+torn up by the roots. In the clutches of this gigantic monster, the two
+chief characters not unnaturally reduced by comparison with their
+surroundings to the proportion of pygmies in their turn, worked from
+happiness to the self-conscious misery which is the only true state of
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have chosen a man and a woman, neither of them in any way
+exceptional,&quot; wrote Delancey in the preface and though this was
+undoubtedly so, they seemed to me truer to fiction than to life. No, the
+merits of the book had nothing to do with the characters, they lay in
+the descriptions of the English countryside, of village life, of London
+traffic, of the Armistice, of an Albert Hall meeting. There was a close
+observation of detail and that pictorial sense which is Delancey's one
+gift and which he relentlessly suppressed whenever he could,
+nevertheless forced its way out here and there. The canvas seemed to me
+immense. Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and
+philistines, &quot;good&quot; women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious
+objectors jostled one another in the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e. Bloomsbury, Westminster,
+Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and
+night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But,
+unlike Delancey's other stories, the soldiers had no V.C.'s and the
+workers didn't touch their caps. My eyes ached and my brain tired as I
+read on, but I forced myself forward with the thought that no one else
+in the world would reach the end.</p>
+
+<p>Then the reviews began. I felt a little nervous but one seemed more
+glowing than the last. Finally, a notice appeared two columns long
+entitled &quot;A Social Document&quot; which ended with the words, &quot;We venture to
+predict that this book will be read 100 years hence as a truer picture
+of the England of to-day than most of the histories that are being
+written.&quot; Delancey was frightfully pleased, naturally. With child-like
+joy he showed me cuttings from intellectual literary papers. His book
+was even mentioned in a leading article and formed the topic of a
+sermon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think of reaching a pulpit,&quot; he exclaimed exultantly. &quot;Of course, I
+know I've lost my old public but I've found my soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;People talk to me of their work now,&quot; he told me another time; &quot;in old
+days, they never thought me one of themselves. I was a story teller, not
+an artist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then it was that an extraordinary thing happened&mdash;&quot;Transition&quot; began
+to sell. It was quoted and talked about until the snowball of fame,
+steadily gathering momentum, started rolling down-hill to the general
+public. The sales went up and up and up. The circulation reached
+100,000 and soon after, 150,000. Why people bought it and whether they
+read it, I don't know, but Sydney (the heroine) and Mark Allison (the
+hero) became household words and soon they were used as generic terms&mdash;a
+Sydney, or an Allison, without so much as an inverted comma!</p>
+
+<p>Delancey hardly ever came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided
+state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be
+able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select
+Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to
+sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot
+and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000
+pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was
+making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect
+seemed more firmly closed than ever?</p>
+
+<p>At this time, Delancey avoided me, but I heard that &quot;Transition&quot; was to
+be dramatised and that the film rights had been bought. How the endless
+chaotic mass, loosely held together by semi-colons, was to be moulded
+into a drama or a movie was quite beyond my imagination, but evidently
+some enterprising people had decided to call their play &quot;Transition.&quot;
+&quot;Delancey must,&quot; I reflected, &quot;be getting very rich indeed.&quot; But still
+he didn't come near me, until one day I sent for him. He looked, I
+thought, just a tiny bit care-worn. The all conquering light had gone
+out of his eye. His boots were a little dusty and he wore no tie-pin. He
+had, I suppose, become rich beyond the symptoms of prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I smiled at him to reassure him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It has all been very surprising, hasn't it?&quot; he said with an
+embarrassed expression.</p>
+
+<p>I didn't know whether to say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no,&quot; that I was glad or that I
+was sorry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it doesn't alter the quality of your book,&quot; I consoled him.</p>
+
+<p>He brightened, &quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;it doesn't; I am glad you said that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We talked about other things, music and old furniture and people. He
+had, he said, thought of buying a house in Chelsea. It was, I realised,
+not exactly the entry he had planned but I encouraged the idea. There
+was, I explained, nothing like the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>And so we rambled on till he took his leave. But five minutes after his
+departure I heard the bell ring. Delancey burst back into the room,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I forgot to tell you,&quot; he said, &quot;that 185,000 copies of 'Transition'
+have sold.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VI"></a><h2>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>A MOTOR</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Alice Longworth</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>There is a special quality about a December sunset. The ruffles of red
+gold gradually untightening, the congested mauve islands on a
+transparent sea of green, the ultimate luminous primrose dissolving into
+violet powder and then the cold biting night lit up by strange patches
+of colour that have somehow been forgotten in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Eve was walking home, her quick, defiant movements challenging the
+evening, her head bent slightly forward, her chin almost touching her
+muff, while her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed and her lithe figure
+seemed almost to be cutting through the icy air.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is happiness,&quot; she thought exultantly, &quot;this bitter winter
+stimulus&mdash;I feel so light&mdash;as if my heart and mind were empty&mdash;only my
+body is quivering with life&mdash;the pure life of physical fitness. Why
+think, or feel, or look forward?&quot; She doubled her pace until her feet
+seemed to be skimming the road. &quot;I feel like a duck and drake,&quot; she
+laughed to herself. &quot;Nothing matters, nothing, while there is still
+frost in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then she saw a little motor waiting on the other side of the road.
+She stopped dead and her heart stopped with her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no reason why it should be his. Hundreds of people have motors
+like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Resolutely she took a step forward. &quot;I can't see from here, and I won't
+go and look,&quot; she added as she crossed over.</p>
+
+<p>And then, shutting her eyes:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jerry,&quot; she said to herself, trying to kill his ghost with his name.</p>
+
+<p>The evening air had become damp and penetrating. It made her throat feel
+sore and she choked a little as she breathed it.</p>
+
+<p>Gingerly she approached the motor to make sure. What an absurd phrase!
+Why, a leap of her heart would have announced its presence, even had her
+eyes been shut.</p>
+
+<p>She knew its every detail, the sound the gears made changing, the feel
+of the seat, the way the hood went up. And, above all, the little clock,
+ticking its warning by day, regular and relentless, while at night its
+bright prying eyes reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget.
+&quot;It is my conscience,&quot; she would say, &quot;and fate and mortality. It
+symbolises all the limitations of life. It is the frontier to
+happiness, the defeat of peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on,&quot; he had said, &quot;and you will end by forgetting it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was what he had called her habit of talking things &quot;away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How often she had slipped into his motor after him, sliding along the
+shiny leather, nestling happily against him, explaining that there was
+no draught, that the rain was not coming in, that her feet were as warm
+as toast. How often he had steered slowly with one hand, while her
+fingers crept into the palm of the other. And then he had turned off the
+engine and they had sat there together silent and alone, cut off from
+the world. How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would caress
+it with her hand, stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him
+looking at her, she would say, &quot;I think my purse must have fallen behind
+the seat.&quot; It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an
+adventure, an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of
+existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better
+kingdom than a room; for a room is full of paraphernalia and
+impedimenta, with books and photographs, and the envelopes of letters to
+remind you of people and things that you want to forget. After all she
+could not sweep her house clear of her life, empty it of the necessary
+and the superfluous of her ties and her duties and her responsibilities.</p>
+
+<p>But his motor&mdash;his little gasping uncomfortable motor&mdash;that was really
+and truly hers, because it was his. Here was her throne and his altar.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder she sometimes stroked it a little, when it was too dark for
+him to ask her what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>And now, now some one else crept in after him, slid towards him on the
+shiny leather, murmured that her feet were as warm as toast, that there
+was no draught, and of course the rain didn't come in....</p>
+
+<p>Or did she say, &quot;Do you think there is something the matter with your
+motor to-day? It seems a little asthmatic?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked at the house. She could see brightness shining behind the
+curtains. She could imagine a glowing fire and a faint smell of warm
+roses. Who was the woman? What were they doing? Sitting on either side
+of the fireplace drowsily intimate, smiling a little perhaps and hardly
+talking, conscious only of the cold outside and the warm room and one
+another....</p>
+
+<p>Eve shivered. Almost unconsciously she fingered the mud guard. &quot;A room
+is a horrible unprivate thing,&quot; she said. &quot;People walk in and out of it,
+any one, and there are books and photographs and letters. It is a
+market place, not a sanctuary,&mdash;whereas you....&quot; She looked at the
+little motor. It was too dark to see anything, but every line of it was
+branded on her heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one will ever love you as I did,&quot; she said to it and slowly,
+wearily, dragging one foot after another, she walked away into the cold
+raw night.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing in the world like winter air to make you feel fit,&quot; Bob said to
+himself as he swung himself along the road at a tremendous pace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jove, what a sunset!&quot; he added, looking up at the red gold ruffles
+slowly untightening. He reflected that there is nothing in the world
+like health. Live cleanly and the high thinking will look after
+itself&mdash;or at least won't matter. Physical condition, there's nothing
+like it. Love and that sort of thing all very well in its way, but a
+cold bath in the morning and plenty of exercise.... He began to whistle,
+and then&mdash;because he did feel most frightfully well&mdash;to run.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Run a mile without being out of breath,&quot; he thought complacently, and
+then&mdash;because he hadn't meant to&mdash;(&quot;wasn't even thinking of her,&quot; he
+grumbled to Providence)&mdash;he found himself outside her door. And in the
+road there was a motor, a little coral coloured motor. He looked at it
+in dismay and then he looked at the house. He saw it was lit up and he
+imagined the room he knew so well. The crimson damask curtains and the
+creamy walls, the glowing fire and the red roses, the roses he had sent
+for her. Probably she would be sitting on that white fur rug on the
+floor, her arms clasped round her knees, her red hair as bright as the
+red hot coals, her dark eyes dreamy and half closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn him, I wonder who he is,&quot; and he started examining the motor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's not very new,&quot; he thought, &quot;the varnish is all off and those shiny
+leather seats are damned cold and slippery, draughty too, I should say;
+hood doesn't close properly. Must let in the rain like a leaking boat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand on the mud guard. &quot;Bent,&quot; he said. He felt a little
+cheered. But then, looking at the glowing house, he grew disconsolate
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wonder what they're doing,&quot; he grumbled to himself. &quot;Jabbering away,
+I'll be bound. Never was much of a hand at talking myself. Wonder who
+the deuce he is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then he looked contemptuously at the little motor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damned if I couldn't do her better than that,&quot; he said. &quot;God, how cold
+it is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Irresolutely he moved away. Then he began to run, but the raw air
+caught his throat and he felt out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not as young as I was,&quot; he thought as he walked away into the damp
+night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VII"></a><h2>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MASTERPIECE</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Harold Child</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>He sat in front of his writing-table with a blank sheet of paper in
+front of him&mdash;a creamy, virginal sheet, inviting and elusive. &quot;A few
+black smudges and the whole of life might be there,&quot; he thought,
+&quot;concentrated but limited with four corners and no boundaries.&quot; He
+thought of the untouched whiteness of the paper violated by a
+masterpiece&mdash;or a love letter. He didn't want to think of love letters.
+He had written such hundreds, and for four years now they had all been
+to the same person. His fidelity had been due, he supposed, to the fact
+that to him she was almost more an idea than an individual, a legend
+that he had created. She was his faith, his religion, his shrine. She
+was on a pedestal from which she shed a pale gold light&mdash;silvery
+gold&mdash;of serenity won through suffering. He saw her very seldom, but
+when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as
+if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give
+him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the
+sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that
+gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend had a soul.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day he didn't want to think of her. He wanted to work. The word
+made him smile a little. There had been a time when ideas had seized
+hold of him and driven him recklessly wherever they wanted him to go.
+Then he had made form his fetish and it had become his prison. Now he
+had lost both his abandon and his rigidity and with each, a certain
+driving force had been taken away from him. He would sit in front of his
+table and remember that all the masterpieces of the world are contained
+in the alphabet and it would prevent him from writing. And then he would
+think of her and that would mean writing to her or writing for her. In a
+sense, everything he wrote was &quot;To her.&quot; He remembered the first time
+that he had dared to write her a letter without a beginning. His pen had
+trembled in his hand. And yet it is the way all borderland letters
+begin, whether the frontier is between acquaintanceship and friendship,
+or between friendship and love. For there are moments in life when if
+you can't say &quot;My own Blessed,&quot; you can say nothing&mdash;omission is the
+substitute for the absolute. Only with her, formality was a flavouring
+of intimacy, a curious fragrance like a faint clinging of unseen
+pot-pourri. And so, for a long time after he had sent her his first
+endless, beginningless out-pouring, her letters had begun, &quot;Dear
+Mr. &mdash;&mdash;&quot; and had ended very tidily, with a signature at the bottom of a
+page.</p>
+
+<p>He had dedicated his first novel to her,&mdash;&quot;To Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;&quot; The dedication
+had pleased him. It was so immensely full of reserve and respect and the
+possibility of other things. A little, locked box of a dedication. It
+had pleased her, too. &quot;It is a lovely dedication,&quot; she had said with
+that smile she had, which was like a peeping glimmer of sunshine on a
+grey day.</p>
+
+<p>He had always gone on dedicating his books to her. His collection of
+poems had been called &quot;To Jane&quot;&mdash;which was not her name, but his name
+for her&mdash;a deep, clear name, resolute and courageous, calm and direct
+and sure. A still name. He wondered if any one had ever given to another
+human being as much as he had given her. Or perhaps it was no longer a
+question of giving. Everything came from her and belonged to her. She
+was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and
+his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of
+things, giving a certain reality to the world simply by being in it.</p>
+
+<p>He hardly ever saw her. He couldn't bring himself to force his way
+through the labyrinthine tangle of circumstances that surrounded her. It
+was as if by doing so, he could only reach her mud-spattered and chipped
+and bedraggled, an unworthy, battered object. And so he preferred her to
+live in his heart, warming and watering his imagination, glowing in
+cold, dark places, gilding the tips of his fancies, fertilising his
+soul. He hardly wanted her outside in the physical world. But when she
+was with him, he felt a deep serenity, an absolute harmony of life.
+Questions and questionings seemed remote and frivolous, the useless
+paraphernalia of empty lives. There came, with her, a fullness, a sense
+of completion.</p>
+
+<p>He sat and thought of her and gradually he shut his eyes and imagined
+her coming into the room. Her movements would be very slow and
+deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she
+were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a
+few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. Slowly she would pull
+off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as
+she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he
+would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap
+again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another&mdash;a
+faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her
+exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she
+would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair,
+a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. She
+always gave him a feeling of gold and silver and luminous whiteness, a
+steady radiance that illuminated without blinding. And perhaps she would
+sink her head back into a cushion and shut her eyes with a little
+grateful sigh to these moments of respite, and he would watch her, proud
+beyond measure to be able to give her these little patches of peace. And
+between them there would be a fullness of silence. Sometimes she would
+talk a little with a low, clear, echoless voice like a note without a
+pedal. A still voice&mdash;monotonous, people called it&mdash;with almost
+imperceptible modulations which seemed gradually deeply significant as
+your ear became attuned to them, like a dim room in which you are able
+to see everything when your eye is accustomed to the light.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the altogether satisfying things about her, this abundant
+treasure of intimacy which could not be guessed at or even suspected by
+the ordinary passer-by. &quot;That is the woman with the lovely hair? I never
+know what to talk to her about,&quot; he had heard people say, and
+exultantly, reverently, he had pressed her image to his heart. She never
+talked much. Seeing her in imagination to-day, he saw her leaning back,
+everything about her drooping and relaxed, her arms, her hands, her
+feet&mdash;they had all abdicated&mdash;only from the depths of her infinite
+tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of
+this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and
+he would answer&mdash;rather shortly&mdash;or she would make a statement which he
+would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between
+them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations and
+amplifications had become impossible.</p>
+
+<p>And she would get up slowly, giving herself a little shake to wake
+herself up into reality while he gave her her hat, her hat-pins, her
+veil, her gloves, her bag, one by one, and taking her hands, he would
+kiss them first on the backs and then on the palms and then give them
+too back to her.</p>
+
+<p>And she would say, &quot;Thank you,&quot; and look slowly all round the room, as
+she always did, wanting to take it away with her without one detail
+missing, for it was to this room that her soul retreated in its moments
+of unbearable loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>With difficulty, she would make her way to the door and rather
+hurriedly, because she knew it was a weakness&mdash;she who was so deliberate
+and so strong&mdash;she would say, &quot;Write to me,&quot; and then she would open and
+shut the door herself because she liked to take away the picture of him
+standing in the middle of his sanctuary&mdash;her sanctuary....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He opened his eyes. The room was so full of her that he took a deep
+breath, breathing the certainty of her into his soul. And he seemed to
+hear the words, &quot;Write to me.&quot; He smiled very tenderly. He loved her to
+have this one little wish&mdash;she was so far above and beyond concrete
+manifestations&mdash;she who had such a deep contempt for imprisoning forms.
+And he remembered her once looking at a cheque and saying, &quot;The figures,
+after all, are a limitation.&quot; And suddenly in front of him he saw the
+blank sheet of paper. &quot;She shall have the most wonderful love-letter
+ever written by man to woman,&quot; he said to himself and at the very bottom
+of the page, he put one initial. Then very tenderly he folded it up and
+addressed it, remembering that it was thus that his first novel had been
+dedicated&mdash;&quot;To Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;.&quot; &quot;The difference is,&quot; he thought, &quot;that this is
+a masterpiece.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="VIII"></a><h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>TEA TIME</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Sylvester Gates</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>She lay on a sofa covered with white marabou, her head sunk deep into a
+billowy morass of lace-coloured satin and lace-coloured lace. She could
+see her pointed toes emerging and her arm dangling over the edge as if
+she had forgotten it. On her finger was a huge emerald ring, a splotch
+of cr&egrave;me de menthe spilt on the whiteness of her hand. She felt
+entrenched and anchored in an altogether strong position, so fixed that
+all advances would have to be made to her. This gave to her voice and to
+her gestures an indolent melodious security.</p>
+
+<p>As the door opened she turned her eyes round slowly, suppressing all
+eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mortimer!&quot; She wondered if disappointment could be as easily controlled
+as joy. &quot;How nice of you to come and see me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you glad&mdash;really?&quot; He was kissing her hand with an unnecessary
+mixture of shyness and intensity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How intolerably literal people in love are,&quot; she thought petulantly;
+&quot;always forcing significance into everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; she said, smiling lazily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is good of you to let me come like this.&quot; How she hated his
+humility, but&mdash;&quot;I like you to,&quot; she murmured, automatically kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How lovely you look! Lovelier than ever before&mdash;as lovely as ever
+before.&quot; And then, &quot;I love you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think so?&quot; She seemed amused and sceptical.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you doubt it?&quot; He clutched her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if you put it like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are laughing at me,&quot; he recognised sadly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forgive me.&quot; She put her hand on his, lightly, caressingly, her voice
+gentle and tender.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you do know it, don't you?&quot; He was very insistent.</p>
+
+<p>(&quot;Does he think that I am blind and deaf and that no one has ever loved
+me before?&quot; she wondered irritably.)</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you think so,&quot; she prevaricated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; he was firm. &quot;I shall love you always.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense.&quot; She was tart with realism. &quot;Why do you fly in the face of
+all experience with meaningless generalisations?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have never said it before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then how can you know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hated her barrister mood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elaine, aren't you glad I love you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course.&quot; She closed her eyes wearily. They talked of other things
+and she remembered how intelligent he was. It had been&mdash;during these
+last months&mdash;very easy to forget. But though her interest was
+concentrated, his attention was on other things.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elaine,&quot; he blurted, &quot;are you going to the country to-morrow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When will you know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no idea!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But when shall I see you again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elaine, please do put me out of my misery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well then&mdash;I shan't see you again this week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elaine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I <i>am</i> sorry I bothered you; don't punish me. I promise not to ask any
+more questions, but please let me know when you come back. Even if you
+only ring me up on the telephone I shall have heard your voice!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not angry with me, are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should I be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought perhaps you were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. &quot;Is there anything amusing about being loved?&quot; she
+thought; &quot;what patient women the great coquettes of the world must have
+been! How I wish I were a crisp intelligent old maid, with a talent
+perhaps for gardening or books on the Renaissance!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How tired you look!&quot; He had taken her hand and was pressing it with
+funny little jerky grasps. &quot;I wish you belonged to me; I wouldn't let
+you spend yourself on every Tom, Dick and Harry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is so difficult to know,&quot; she murmured, &quot;who is Tom, who is Dick, or
+who is Harry!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I think of the way your divine sympathy is imposed upon&mdash;the way
+your friends take advantage of you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I like being taken advantage of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;People's selfishness makes me sick. Look at your white face and your
+drooping eyelids, and your tired little smiles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sorry! Good God! My beloved, do take care of yourself, please. Promise
+me not to see any one after I leave; go to bed and pull the blinds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I am expecting Bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill will be all the better for not getting what he wants for once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But supposing he doesn't want it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill!&quot; She put out her left hand, all her features lit up with a quiet
+luminous radiance. His eyes were smiling, but his mouth was grave.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elaine!&quot; He said it as if it were a very significant remark, and,
+though he hadn't meant to, he caressed her name with his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mortimer thinks I ought to go to bed and send you away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you won't?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Probably not.&quot; She was bubbling over with gaiety. &quot;I am very
+weak-minded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two men were not looking at one another, but currents of hostility
+flowed between them. Bill had not fought for Elaine's love; it had come
+to him with a strange inevitability. He had no fear of losing it and no
+particular desire to keep it, but the thought that you possess something
+that some one else passionately covets is always exhilarating. He would
+never have admitted it&mdash;he could never have admitted it, but she was to
+him like an object dangled on a watch chain&mdash;not obtrusively displayed
+but a possession recognised by everybody and taken for granted by him.
+Only he never seemed bored because he was never tired of mobilising his
+own charms. And in herself, she delighted him&mdash;it was only in her
+relations with him that she got on his nerves. He loved to see her with
+other men exercising the divine arts of her irresistibility, her every
+smile, her every gesture, the intonations of her voice, the turn of her
+head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her
+intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the
+masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a
+coquette&mdash;jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull&mdash;she tired
+him to death.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I must be going.&quot; Mortimer spoke doubtfully. There was a pause.
+Then Elaine pulled herself together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have so much to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was so nice of you to come and see me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was so nice of you to let me come. Please remember your promise to
+let me know when you come back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course.&quot; He was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Wearily she shut her eyes. &quot;Do you remember the time when Mortimer was
+charming?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed I do; he was quite delightful till he fell in love with you. He
+is really a warning against loving.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You hardly heed it, do you?&quot; Her voice was very bitter. How he hated
+the entry of the acidulated tragic into all their talks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps not.&quot; He felt guilty, knowing how much he was hurting her.
+&quot;After all you cannot ask me to model myself on the man who bores you
+most in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. &quot;What a good reason for not loving me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The best!&quot; He was smiling his enchanting, flattering smile at her&mdash;the
+smile that always seemed to draw you into the Holy of Holies of his
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I may be going away to-morrow,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I shall be back on Thursday. Shall we dine together that night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am dining with a Russian friend of mine who is passing through
+London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Friday, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Friday I am going to the country for the week-end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it will have to be Monday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I am afraid so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Afraid that you will have to dine with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How civil you are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. She wished she could keep all the acid out of her
+voice. He thought how tiresome women were, always wanting to know just
+what you were going to do.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill,&quot; she said, holding out her hand, which he took rather
+perfunctorily. He felt like a dog that knows exactly which trick follows
+what word of command, but as, from force of habit, he invariably became
+lover-like when he was absent-minded, he stroked her arm with a
+significant caressing gesture that filled her with joy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you glad I love you?&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is an intelligent woman,&quot; he thought, &quot;who has had hundreds of
+men in love with her, making a demand for verbal assurances that can't
+possibly add anything to her peace of mind. Either they are true and
+superfluous, or they are false and transparently unconvincing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill,&quot; she said, reading his thoughts, &quot;you can't understand my wanting
+mere words, can you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;not you, who know so exactly what they mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless, they are sometimes vaguely comforting and reassuring&mdash;a
+sort of local an&aelig;sthetic.&quot; He loved her insight, her curious layers of
+detachment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill,&quot; she murmured, &quot;I haven't seen you for ages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not since two this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't count a ball; besides I was too tired to stop dancing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You danced like an angel and your eyes were shining with ecstasy,
+lighting hopes all round, though of course I knew you didn't know your
+partner from the parquet&mdash;if he happened to be as good as the floor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You love watching me, don't you? much better than seeing me.&quot; How he
+wished she weren't always right.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember what a wonderful drama you are, Elaine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A drama in which you have played lead. But you only liked the first
+act&mdash;the Comedy Act, and you won't even enjoy the curtain as much as you
+think, because always there will be the nasty certainty of its some day
+going up again, and then you won't even be in the wings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How diabolically clear-sighted she was!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bill, dearest,&quot; she held out her hand, &quot;you are reaching the moment
+when you long to be the third person. You want a little rest. You have
+come to the point in the life of every lover when he prefers the husband
+to the wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this was more than he could stand. A horrible shadow was being cast
+over his future, romance was shrinking before his eyes. Frightened, he
+bent down and kissed her. &quot;Darling,&quot; he murmured, nestling his face in
+her neck, &quot;what nonsense you talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Love, passion, romance, fidelity&mdash;all were vindicated by this deliberate
+act.</p>
+
+<p>Her doubts, her certainties, subsided, vanished&mdash;hypnotised with
+happiness. &quot;I was teasing,&quot; she lied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not just this moment, please; five more minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will be just as difficult then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I shall have had five more minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How practical you are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stayed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will write to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I shall try and be back in time for tea Thursday, then I shall see
+you, in spite of your stupid Russian.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I can get away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't you bring him to dine with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm afraid not; he has asked some one else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I have some forms printed with 'I miss you, bless you,' for you
+to sign and send me each day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goose!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, at any rate, I shall have you properly on Monday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And please make a great effort about Thursday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She drew him down to her, holding his face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is silly to love at my time of life,&quot; she said; &quot;I am too young. It
+is like wearing a lovely new dress to climb mountains in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will always be young,&quot; he said; &quot;you are eternal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was his considered view; he wished she weren't. Kissing her a little
+absently he walked to the door; then because he had always done so, he
+walked back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bless you,&quot; he said. It was perfunctory and final. The shutting of the
+door turned out the light in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How tired I am!&quot; she thought, and then&mdash;&quot;Tuesday, Wednesday,
+Thursday&mdash;Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="IX"></a><h2>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<p>He knew that nothing could ever possibly happen to him again and so he
+sat on his sofa waiting&mdash;for death, he supposed, having excluded every
+other possibility. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to do anything,
+to eat or drink or feel or think&mdash;above all, he didn't want to move. He
+had shut his eyes trying to shut out the room. Every bit of it was
+saturated in her, everything had been consecrated&mdash;contaminated, it
+seemed to him now&mdash;by her touch. There wasn't a patch of carpet or
+chintz that didn't belong to her intimately and exclusively. Every
+object in the room seemed to pose her and add to the interminable
+picture gallery of his memory. He opened his eyes and saw an uncut
+pencil. Here, at any rate, was something new and independent&mdash;neutral
+territory, unsharpened it was an unloaded pistol and he wanted to shoot.
+At her? He was bound to miss. His bitterness was no medium through which
+to recapture her magic and without it he would merely be forcing a lay
+figure to perform vulgar and meaningless antics. And if he tore her to
+bits, it would be an indictment of himself, not of his gentlemanliness,
+that had long ceased to mean anything to him&mdash;but of his taste. Wearily,
+he shut his eyes. It was no good thinking when your mind had become a
+circle&mdash;a very small circle. He remembered something she had once said,
+&quot;The future looks like the present, stretching interminably ahead in the
+shadow of the past.&quot; She had always understood everything, so she didn't
+deserve to be forgiven anything.</p>
+
+<p>The front door bell rang and at once, he felt sick and faint. A ring
+still excited him as much as it had done in the days when it might have
+been hers. It was a ridiculous state of nerves that he had never been
+able to get out of.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later she was in the room.</p>
+
+<p>An absolute limpness had come over him. If his life had depended on it,
+he couldn't have lifted his hand. The surface of his mind examined every
+detail of her&mdash;the intense whiteness of her face and the severe
+blackness of her clothes, the fact that she wore no jewel of any sort,
+not even a ring&mdash;except, of course, her wedding-ring. He had never seen
+it before and it seemed a gaudy splash of colour out of harmony with the
+rest of her.</p>
+
+<p>She took off her hat and laid it on the table. Then she walked to the
+window, touching the things she passed with a little caressing gesture.
+He noticed that she picked up the unpointed pencil and he felt a little
+desolate feeling, as if he had lost his only friend.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, she turned round, &quot;I am leaving England to-morrow,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>He shivered at her velvety voice, as he would have shivered had his hand
+touched suede. &quot;Well,&quot; his voice was too natural to be natural, &quot;you
+don't want to say good-bye to me again, do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is there such a thing as 'good-bye,'&quot; she mused; &quot;won't this room
+always be a part of my life? Can one end anything? A chapter, a
+paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on
+living in spite of subsequent events?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Relentlessly he brought her down from her generalisations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have ended my life,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no.&quot; She was sitting beside him on the sofa. Gently and tentatively
+she put her hand on his. &quot;Take it away,&quot; he said roughly, miserably,
+conscious that he was behaving like a hero of melodrama, and then more
+quietly, &quot;can't you spare me anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never could spare any one anything, could I? Not <i>even</i> myself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He resisted the wistful pleading of her eyes, taking a savage pleasure
+in their tired look. No doubt the preparations for her journey had
+exhausted her. Her hand was lying limply on the arm of the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does it feel like to wear a wedding-ring?&quot; he asked harshly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It feels so strange at first. One keeps catching sight of it and being
+made to feel different by it. Somehow, it really matters, it really
+seems to mean something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed?&quot; He was ashamed of the cheap cynicism of his tone. It wasn't
+what he had meant to say.</p>
+
+<p>She waited a few minutes and then she got up and put on her hat, deftly
+arranging her veil with almost mechanical quickness and skill. Then she
+pulled on her gloves. How well he knew the swift deliberateness of her
+movements. Without turning round she left the room. He heard her go into
+the dining-room.... A few minutes later, he heard her come out again. He
+heard her open and shut the front door.... He went to the open window.
+Would she look up? Surely that was the test of whether or not she was
+still the same&mdash;the eternal. In the past, whatever had happened between
+them, she had never been able to resist that final peep, half to see
+whether he was there, half to send up a little tiny semi-binding glance
+of reconciliation. Sometimes, when he had been very angry with her he
+had watched from behind the curtains. To-day, he was at the open window,
+waiting to send her the smile which was to obliterate the past
+half-hour, the past six months. It was not to be so much a smile as a
+look, a benediction.</p>
+
+<p>She got into her taxi. Through the far window she told the driver where
+to go. She never glanced behind her, she never glanced up.</p>
+
+<p>He shut the window with a shiver. &quot;The end,&quot; he murmured.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="X"></a><h2>X</h2>
+
+<h3>MISUNDERSTOOD</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">John Maynard Keynes</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>Her greatness was an accepted fact. Her fame had not been a dashing
+offensive but an inevitable advance quietly over-running the world.
+People who never read knew her name as well as Napoleon's. There was,
+somehow, something a little irreverent about being her contemporary. To
+attend the birth of so many masterpieces gave you the feeling of a
+legendary past invading the present.</p>
+
+<p>A few great critics wrote wonderfully about her, but a vast majority of
+them, trained only in witty disparagement and acute disintegrating
+perception, became empty and formal in face of an unaccustomed challenge
+to admiration and reverence.</p>
+
+<p>It is only the generous who give to the rich, the big who praise the
+big; the niggardly salve their consciences in doles to the humbly poor,
+making life into a pilgrimage of greedy patrons in search of grateful
+victims.</p>
+
+<p>June was radiantly removed from the possible inroads of charity. You
+couldn't even pretend to have discovered her&mdash;unless, of course, you
+had met her&mdash;then you were quite sure that you had. Her friends
+explained&mdash;as friends always do&mdash;that it was what she was, not what she
+did, that mattered, that her letters and her conversation were far more
+wonderful than her books, that she was her own greatest masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>It was irritating to be forced out of it like that, but when you had
+seen her you began doing the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to want to tell people that her hair was like a
+crisp heap of rusty October beech leaves, that she always had time for
+you. And then you began to explain that she was happily married, which
+led you to the fact that she was happy, which reminded you that you were
+happy, by which time no one was listening to you. But it didn't seem to
+matter. People would ask such silly questions about her. &quot;Does she
+admire Dostoievski?&quot; they would say, and you would answer, &quot;She has the
+most enchanting brown squirrel&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>George wasn't thinking any of those things. His mind didn't work like
+that. He was eating a huge breakfast, with the &quot;Times&quot; propped up
+against his coffee pot. The two and a half columns about her new book
+annoyed him. He hated a woman to get herself talked about&mdash;June, too, of
+all people. There was nothing new-fangled about June. Why, his mother
+loved her and she was so pretty and so fond of clothes and babies. There
+was really no excuse for her sprawling over his paper when she ought to
+have been moving discreetly through the social column like his other
+female friends.</p>
+
+<p>There was really no reason for a happy, cared-for woman to write. It
+wasn't even as if she had to earn her own living. Richard ought to put
+his foot down, but Richard didn't seem to mind. One might almost have
+thought that he was proud of his wife's reputation, if one hadn't known
+him to be such a manly man. After all, a woman's place was in her
+home&mdash;or the Court Circular. She should never stray from birth, deaths
+and marriages to other parts of the paper. Even the sporting news
+(though he liked a woman to play a good game of golf or a good game of
+tennis) was <i>hardly</i> the place for a lady.</p>
+
+<p>George knew that he was working himself up and he hated doing that at
+breakfast. So he started undoing the elaborate knot of a brown paper
+parcel to soothe his nerves&mdash;George never cut string. And out of it
+emerged her book&mdash;her new book. It was beautifully bound (she knew that
+he liked a book to look nice) and on the fly leaf was the inscription:
+&quot;A leather cover, a little paper and my love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was as if she had sent him a box or a paper weight or a clock. It
+wasn't the gift, it was the thought that mattered. She knew that he had
+never read any of her books, but they were as good a vehicle for her
+affection as another.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are the only person,&quot; she had said to him, &quot;to whom my books are
+really tokens,&quot; and she had smiled very radiantly as if he were the only
+person who had discovered the real secret of her books. George reflected
+sadly that he was the only person who understood her. Why, it was
+maddening to think that any one reading those paragraphs in the &quot;Times&quot;
+might imagine her middle-aged and ugly and spectacled. And how were they
+to know that her knowledge of cricket averages was probably greater than
+that of the Selection Committee? Probably, too, they pictured her with
+short hair, June, with her crinkling crown of autumn beach leaves; and
+thick ankles, June with her Shepperson legs; and blunt inky fingers,
+June with her rosy pointing nails and her hands like uncurling fans.</p>
+
+<p>His mind went to other things, her low hard volleys and the lithe, easy
+grace with which she leapt over the lawn-tennis net. In thinking of her,
+the irritation her writing caused him decreased. It seemed altogether
+too irrelevant. June was the sort of woman one did things for. Helpless,
+he reflected with satisfaction, thinking of her tininess. Why, he could
+lift her up with one hand. George always mixed up physical phenomena
+with psychological fact. Small women were in need of protection; pale
+women were delicate; clever women were masculine&mdash;the greatest of all
+crimes. June might think it funny to be clever, but no one could deny
+that she was feminine&mdash;the sort of woman who appealed to you to do
+little tiny things for her (things you would have done in any case), as
+if they were very important and very dramatic and very difficult. George
+liked the sort of woman who said to him: &quot;Mr. Carruthers, you who know
+everything&mdash;&mdash;&quot; It was apt, of course, to lead you into a lot of
+trouble, but that was one of the necessary results of being a man and
+having a superior intellect. June wasn't like that. She never asked you
+for legal advice or financial tips. She simply thought it most angelic
+of you to have fetched her coat and so clever of you to have noticed
+that it was getting chilly. And when you sent her flowers on her
+birthday, she would explain to you the flow of delight she had felt and
+perhaps a tiny little moment of surprise until she realised that of
+course it wasn't surprising at all, but just exactly what she knew at
+the bottom of her heart you would do&mdash;you, who were such a wonderful
+friend. Only the flowers were far more beautiful than she could have
+imagined and how had you been able to find them?</p>
+
+<p>George had a photograph of June on his writing table. People were apt to
+stop short at it and say: &quot;Is that the <i>great</i> June Rivers, the writer?&quot;
+And he would brush the question aside&mdash;one must be loyal&mdash;and say: &quot;She
+is a friend of mine,&quot; rather stiffly, as if they had said that she had
+run away from her husband or been found drunk.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at it this morning, and suddenly he felt that he must see
+her&mdash;a feeling she frequently inspired. He knew that she hated the
+telephone, so he sent her a little note.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear June: Thank you for your beautifully-bound book. May I come round
+this afternoon? I long to see your hair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He wondered why he had put that: it was a silly sort of thing to say; so
+he scratched out the &quot;hair&quot; very carefully so that you could see
+nothing, and substituted &quot;you.&quot; Then he wrote &quot;George&quot; and, after a
+moment's hesitation, added the postscript:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you saw that Macaulay had taken four wickets for two runs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later her answer reached him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;George dear, please come this afternoon. I was so hoping you would.
+Come whatever time suits you. I shall be happy and patient and impatient
+waiting for you.&quot; (&quot;That doesn't mean anything,&quot; he growled to himself.
+&quot;Pity she can't write more clearly.&quot;) &quot;Of course I saw about Macaulay.
+June.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At five he was on her doorstep, and a very few moments later he was
+holding both her hands. They seemed somehow to have got lost in his.
+Her hair was crisper and rustier than ever, swirling about in
+competitive overlapping ripples. Her eyes, like a shallow Scotch brook,
+were laughing at him: like transparent toffee they were or burnt sugar
+or amber. &quot;June,&quot; he said, and his voice was funny and thick, &quot;I had
+forgotten how pretty you were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was just a little plot you were making with yourself to please
+me,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>They sat happily on a sofa and talked about the wonderful way Mr. Fender
+managed the Surrey bowling; they discussed the iniquities of the
+Selection Committee; they decided that no woman who played the base line
+game could ever be quite first class. They considered the relative
+merits of Cromer and Brighton from the point of view of George's mother;
+they agreed that being braced was one thing and being overbraced
+another. Then June told George that he ought to marry, and George said
+that he was not a marrying man, and June said that men became the worst
+old maids and that a man's place was in the home and George thought that
+she had got it wrong by accident.</p>
+
+<p>June was perfectly happy. She loved talking to George&mdash;George who adored
+her without knowing that she had genius, only that she had sympathy&mdash;had
+no idea that she was a great woman, only that she was a charming one.
+He was looking at her with a worried expression.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;June,&quot; he said, &quot;you look tired.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but I'm not a bit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He put her feet up and covered them with a shawl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish you would stop writing,&quot; he said. &quot;What good do books do? Health
+is the only thing that matters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Loving is the only thing that matters,&quot; she murmured, &quot;loving and being
+loved.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; (George thought it so like a woman to go off at a tangent like
+that), &quot;you've got Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard,&quot; she twinkled, &quot;is not like you. He loves my books.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He ought to know better,&quot; George asserted severely, and at that moment
+in he came.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;George!&quot; Richard was jubilant. &quot;Have you heard the news?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What news?&quot; George was thinking of the Carpentier-Lewis fight due that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;June has been awarded the Nobel prize.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How splendid!&quot; George looked a little puzzled. &quot;Is it for life saving?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; June put in quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not at all surprised.&quot; George beamed at her. &quot;You always were as
+plucky as they made 'em and gifted. Do you remember how charmingly you
+used to sing? 'Not a big voice, but so true,' Mother used to say, and
+she's a great judge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your mother has always been so sweet to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a talented woman like you wants to write for beats me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>George had got back to his grievance again, but she lured him on to the
+subject of irises on which they were both experts, and it was not till
+just before dinner that he hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he remembered that he hadn't asked her whose life she had
+saved. How silly and how selfish! It was so like her not to talk about
+herself, and then he saw on a patch of posters: &quot;June Rivers awarded the
+Nobel prize,&quot; and though he was very late he stopped to buy an evening
+paper.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XI"></a><h2>XI</h2>
+
+<h3>COUNTERPOINT</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To
+<span class="smcap">the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>Matthew half shut his eyes&mdash;as he always did when he particularly wanted
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For the first time in my life,&quot; he said, &quot;I regret my myopia.
+Confronted with this room, imagination pales before sight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Virginia looked round&mdash;at the strawberry ice brocade, at the gilt, at
+the Bouchers&mdash;so painstaking and so painful&mdash;at the palms that seemed to
+conceal manicurists and barbers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look,&quot; he continued, &quot;at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose
+take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair and dye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh,&quot;&mdash;Virginia's smile was playing like a light over his face&mdash;&quot;think
+of the days when her eyes were like stars and her ears like shells and
+her hair was curling all over the place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia,&quot; his voice was tender, &quot;where you are there are no more
+palms, wigs turn into hair, rouge into blushes&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew,&quot; she said, &quot;you are a romantic and I am the only person in the
+world who knows it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are the only person in the world with whom I am in love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For the moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How practical you are!&quot; he teased, &quot;full of forethought and arri&egrave;re
+pens&eacute;es. Isn't the moment the capture of the divine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sighed a little&mdash;wise with the wisdom of frustrated dreams, and she
+thought how happy he was&mdash;happy with the happiness of iridescent,
+ever-changing whimsies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia, does that young man love you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The one in spectacles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you sure?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One can never be sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course if he doesn't, it proves that I am right in saying that
+spectacles are fatal. They prevent people from using either their eyes
+or their imagination. Shall I go up to him and ask him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He would answer: 'I don't understand.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I would explain: 'Virginia is the only lady in orange,' and he
+would look at you for a moment or two and, holding out his hand in an
+ecstasy of gratitude, he would say: 'Thank you. Yes, I love her.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew,&quot; she murmured, &quot;what an unsuitable name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They sat in silence, interfered with only by the necessity of
+convincing passers-by that they did not want to be interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew,&quot; she said, &quot;do you see that tall fair man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The blond beast?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With a very tall woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With gold hair and eyes like cows in pictures of Christ in a manger?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. He loves her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How suitable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it isn't. He has a red-haired wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How unsuitable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, do be serious. I like him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How complicated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I told him I hated his air of perfunctory but restrained passion, and
+he laughed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any one would have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And we made friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You always make friends with everybody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are unsympathetic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am, I confess, a little bewildered by the situation. Do I understand
+that you are suffering from an unrequited passion for a man who is
+illegitimately attached to a magnificent cow and legitimately bound to a
+bewitching squirrel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, you really are provoking. What I mean is that he is making a
+fool of himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he might do something irrevocable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lucky man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in desperation&mdash;a desperation half exasperation and
+half enchantment. If only Matthew would sometimes appear serious&mdash;there
+is something so restful about appearances. Instead of which he always
+remained superlatively unsatisfactory and superlatively irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia,&quot; he said, &quot;let us leave all this and drive round the park and
+I will talk to you like a lover in a bad book and I will mean every word
+I say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can't go yet,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia,&quot;&mdash;his voice was urgent&mdash;&quot;I will be divinely pompous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was so like him. He always tried to safeguard the simplest, most
+sincere moments of his life by inverted commas. It was a little trick
+that always irritated her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What an artist you are,&quot; she remarked acidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, indeed,&quot; he assented, smiling her out of her irritation. And then:
+&quot;I have known you, Virginia, ever since I can remember.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You told me that the first time we met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is still true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How magnificent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was her turn now to ward off what she was longing for. To be serious
+with Matthew was a form of disarmament you always regretted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And knowing you as I do, I recognise the crusading light in your eye
+and I must point out to you that your altruistic excursions have not
+always ended by tidying up the situation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alas, no.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, why plunge into the eternal triangle? There is really no r&ocirc;le for
+you unless you propose to supplant the cow. What, by the way, is her
+name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't like the statuesque,&quot; he said, wrinkling up his eyes. &quot;Look at
+her ecstatic vacant expression. A dangerous combination.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Virginia wished she had not given him this theme. He would weave it into
+such marvellous patterns that she would never be able to get it out
+intact again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have some more facts,&quot; he said. &quot;What is the squirrel called?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Estelle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the hero?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Edgar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;More and more suitable. What prophetic parents! How admirably they kept
+their heads at the font. The squirrel is very vivacious&mdash;is it a brave
+front, a blind eye or a shallow heart?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Estelle is a courageous woman and discreet with the unpierceable
+reticence of spontaneity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How delightful. I might try Estelle myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I said 'I love you,' would she laugh or cry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laugh, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With a little hidden tear in her voice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have my doubts about the hidden tear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she would be no good to me. I like mixed effects.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Grace and Edgar danced by. They were both radiantly fair
+and a little colossal in scale. Her eyes were half shut and her mouth
+was half open.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew,&quot; Virginia was firm, &quot;something must be done. How can he scale
+the heights of a great passion carrying that hold-all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An empty hold-all isn't so very heavy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is if you can't put it down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia,&quot; he said, &quot;your missionary zeal appals me. Why invade the
+situation? What are you going to tell the man? That he has children?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. That he is throwing his life into a cul-de-sac.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He won't believe you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And it will probably end by his falling in love with you and think
+what a terrible mess the cow and the squirrel will make.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Edgar came up to them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you give me the pleasure of a dance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should love to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Virginia's apricot had become a strand in the pattern of the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>A parma violet lady settled on Matthew like a fly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't think how you have anything left to say to Virginia,&quot; she
+remarked disagreeably. &quot;But I suppose you simply make love to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not simple at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us go and sit somewhere,&quot; Edgar was saying, and they went into
+another room.</p>
+
+<p>All of our real indiscretions in life come in the form of
+generalisations. A name is a warning, and we really give ourselves away
+in abstract philosophisings applied by an intelligent companion to the
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should we accept ready-made standards?&quot; Edgar said. &quot;None of the
+great governing forces of life can fit into a ditch of conventions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sometimes you have to set out to sea and turn your back on the old
+familiar coastline.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a pleasure boat for an excursion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a sailing ship for distant seas.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Argosies have a way of turning into penny steamers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought not to say that&mdash;you of all people, who sail the seas in a
+tub with a sunshade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh,&quot; she said, &quot;I am at the mercy of the winds. But you have a harbour
+and an anchor and a flag to fly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are thinking that I'm a fool.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must sometimes cut one's losses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must sometimes cut one's gains&mdash;a much more difficult thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can't throw away light.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The world is brighter with your back to the sun.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia,&quot; he said, &quot;I have made up my mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I say? I am helpless. I see you going shipwreck on dummy
+rocks&mdash;the water let in by a penknife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are cruel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you think I know those frontiers, when paradise seems but a step
+away, but you know that it is a step you can't retrace?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should you want to go backwards?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked past him into space.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Behind us,&quot; she murmured, &quot;lie so many things&mdash;memories of childhood,
+dim happy echoes, primroses and hoops and peace shot with laughter. When
+you have taken your step you daren't look back. Remembering hurts too
+much. And so you look forward&mdash;always forward, knowing that the promised
+land is behind you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Grace was dancing round and round, wondering how one stopped. Away from
+him she felt restless and nervous and will-less and incomplete, like a
+frustrated animal lost and impotent, with smouldering rage in her heart
+and sulky fires in her eyes. Why didn't he come to release her, to calm
+the tearing fever of her blood?</p>
+
+<p>Again and again she walked through the library and always he was on the
+sofa with Virginia&mdash;Virginia in her orange haze melting into cushions;
+and sometimes he was bending right forward, his whole body curved into
+urgency. And when she passed, he half looked up with the tail end of a
+smile falling as it were accidentally in her direction.</p>
+
+<p>Estelle laughed and talked, her feet twinkled, her eyes danced.
+Marriage, she said, was an altogether delightful thing, quite different
+from what people thought&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Matthew was introduced to her. He explained that love was so important
+that it could only be discussed lightly. He said that her hair reminded
+him ... he wished he could think of what, but he had such a bad memory
+for metaphors. It took him all his time to remember that a harp was like
+water and Carpentier like a Greek god. It was funny, wasn't it, to have
+such a weak head. He thought it came from hay fever&mdash;he always had hay
+fever during the third week of May. It came entirely from honeysuckle.</p>
+
+<p>Estelle said that she would like to sit in the library. Grace was in a
+corner pulling monosyllables out of her mouth like teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Virginia was still in the middle of the sofa, a dissolving mass of
+orange mist. Edgar was talking away all risk of his suiting the action
+to the word. Estelle was dimpling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you remember,&quot; she said to Matthew, &quot;that orange is flame-colour?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Jove, yes,&quot; he said, &quot;oriflammes and hell fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A low murmur came from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you introduce me to your husband?&quot; Matthew asked.</p>
+
+<p>They all talked together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the way, Virginia,&quot; Matthew said, &quot;the young man does love you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear me, how very nice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It only required me to point it out to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was he pleased?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Delighted. By the way, Mr. Wilmot,&quot;&mdash;Matthew turned to Edgar&mdash;&quot;do you
+ever wear spectacles?&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XII"></a><h2>XII</h2>
+
+<h3>VILLEGIATURA</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Marcel Proust</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>What a fool he had been to come. These wooden walls creaking at a touch,
+and the floors responding like an animal in pain to the lightest
+footstep. Not that Marie Aim&eacute;e had light footsteps&mdash;far from it. She
+clattered about with the happy noisiness of a good conscience and
+perfect health. In her hands the opening of a door became an air-raid
+and yet what could you do, confronted with her rosy face beaming with a
+child-like confidence in giving pleasure and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was entirely his own fault. Everything was what he might have
+expected. The sea was just where he had been told it would be, the air
+was relentlessly bracing, the cleanliness of the Hotel Bungalow reminded
+you of a shiny soaped face which had never known powder. It was all, he
+reflected, quite horrible. The salt-laden wind blowing the sand up from
+the dunes, the hard bright sunshine, the effect everything gave you of
+having been painted with the six colours of a child's rather cheap
+paint-box.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A different man,&quot; she had said he would feel. Well he felt it
+already&mdash;the lassitude of his body feebly revolting against the
+impending bracing, his eyes watering at the glare. Health and
+inspiration, Marthe had said, dreamless sleep, an insatiable appetite
+and perfect peace in which to finish his novel. &quot;Think how quiet it will
+be,&quot; she had said. As if the country were ever quiet, crowded as it was
+with locos and dogs and sabots. Surely peace meant Paris in August, with
+every one away, thick carpets and a noiseless valet.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice imagined himself merging into a huge armchair, just able to see
+a square glass vase of Juliette roses&mdash;gilt petals lined with deep pink
+velvet. Why on earth were there never any flowers in the country? And no
+one would disturb him&mdash;no one. Privacy is only possible in a big town.
+Every detail of life in the Hotel Bungalow was revealed to him in a
+series of sights, sounds and smells. And should a fellow lunatic arrive,
+how was he to avoid him? At every meal there would be little exchanges
+of the banal, after dinner a game of billiards&mdash;even possibly, horror of
+horrors, potential excursions planned with zest and good fellowship. And
+all the time he would be saying &quot;No,&quot; more and more ungraciously, or,
+worse still&mdash;and far more likely&mdash;saying &quot;yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then where would his novel be? Not that it was possible any way to
+write in a place where the sun was always in your eyes, the wind blew
+your paper away and creaking boards made sitting in your bedroom out of
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>Marthe was a fool, given up entirely to hygiene and plans for other
+people. &quot;You will come back bubbling over with physical fitness, your
+dear face all tanned,&quot; she had said. &quot;Dear&quot; indeed! It was simply a
+bribe. He was being bribed for his own good. And to think that like a
+great gaby he had been shoved off to the sea by one term of endearment,
+and to a place, too, where there was neither shade nor shadows, simply
+miles and miles of bright monotonous sea, three dusty cornflowers, two
+bedraggled poppies and the sun all around you.</p>
+
+<p>Tanned, indeed! Why his face would be all blisters and his eyes
+bloodshot.</p>
+
+<p>The insensitiveness of women!</p>
+
+<p>If Marthe were here she would bathe before breakfast, feed the hens,
+find the eggs, encourage the cook, pat the dog, listen to the story of
+Marie Aim&eacute;e's life, pick the cornflowers, praise the cook, churn the
+butter, play with the children, climb on to the hay cart, collect shells
+on the beach, lie in the sun, let the sand trickle through her fingers
+and explain with perfect sincerity that it was the most delightful place
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't like paddling or shrimping or sailing or farmyard life.
+He wanted a velvet lawn, a cedar, a rose garden, lavender, a sun dial,
+iced lemonade and solitude. Or he wanted his own cool apartment, with
+drawn sunblinds, vases full of flowers, his immense writing table, and a
+deserted Paris around him.</p>
+
+<p>Women always did to you as they wanted to be done by. That sort of
+literal interpretation of Christianity showed such a lack of
+imagination. It was no good telling Marthe that you didn't like the sea,
+she simply wouldn't believe it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think of the sunset reflected in the wet sand,&quot; she would say, and if
+you told her that you didn't want to think about it, that it was no fit
+subject for an active mind, she would be hurt.</p>
+
+<p>In any case no one had a right to make you do things for your own good.
+It was a horrible form of self-sacrifice. If Marthe had said, &quot;<i>Please</i>
+go to St. Jean-les-Flots and pick me a poppy,&quot; he would have been
+delighted, but to stay at the Hotel Bungalow in the interests of his own
+health was a very different matter.</p>
+
+<p>Marie Aim&eacute;e was putting a pot with one red geranium in it on his writing
+table. It was, she explained, still very early in the season but
+Monsieur must not be discouraged. Later it became very gay with dancing
+and Japanese lanterns in the garden. The Hotel Bungalow would be quite
+full, whereas now there was only Monsieur and a lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But yes, Monsieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A young lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A lady of a certain age.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maurice hoped that it would be an uncertain age. Of course every one
+over twenty would seem old to Marie Aim&eacute;e. Probably the lady was on that
+exquisite frontier line, the early thirties, when the bud is already
+unfurling its petals, angles have softened into curves, and the
+significant is stirring in everything like a quickening child. Thirty,
+the age of delicate response, of subtle tasting, divorced equally from
+the ignorant impetuosity of youth and the desperate clutchings of middle
+age. How he disliked young girls with their sunburn, their manly
+strides, their meaningless giggles, their eternal nicknames! And, over
+their heads, a warning and a trade mark, that sword of
+Damocles&mdash;marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was feeling a little happier. As he walked into lunch he felt a
+real twinge of curiosity. Ridiculous it was&mdash;why he was getting quite
+romantic, imagining an exquisite creature on a holiday from her husband.
+That was no doubt the result of the Hotel Bungalow. On the velvet lawn
+with the cedar, the rose garden, the sun dial and the iced lemonade, he
+would have been enjoying to the full his usual ironic detachment, but
+St. Jean-les-Flots would throw any one to romance.</p>
+
+<p>He walked into the dining room. At the far end with her back to him sat
+the lady. She wore a white coat embroidered with black, a white skirt, a
+white hat with a white lace veil. On the chair beside her lay a Holland
+sunshade lined with green. It was he thought, deplorable, and indicated
+yellow spectacles. Her feet were very small and gave you the impression
+of an insecure foundation to her body. Her back was broad. She was
+certainly over forty. Forty, thought Maurice, the dangerous age&mdash;the
+desperate age. From forty to fifty, the flower in full bloom, the period
+of engulfing passions, of urgent transitory satisfactions. For how many
+women must it not be a ten years' death struggle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a place,&quot; Maurice was disgusted; &quot;it is driving me to melodrama.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The lady got up with a certain waddling stateliness (perhaps after all
+she was fifty). Her clothes fell into perfection&mdash;she walked slowly and
+calmly with appraising steps. The lace veil was over her face. She did
+not forget her sunshade, her bag, or her handkerchief. Louis, the
+waiter, opened the door for her. She sailed out like a gondola on the
+stage, or Lohengrin's swan. Her movements gave an effect of invisible
+wheels.</p>
+
+<p>During the afternoon she remained undetectable, which was a tour de
+force at St. Jean-les-Flots, where the landscape was a successful
+conspiracy against concealment, and a sunshade could be seen for miles.
+Maurice had a tiresome feeling that she was lying out somewhere with
+that horrible sunshade over her head and a novel by Gyp on her lap. Had
+she, he wondered, ever read any of his books? Perhaps when she found out
+his name she would come up to him and say: &quot;Are you <i>the</i> Mr. Maurice
+Van Trean?&quot; And when he had bowed in the affirmative, she would add that
+she liked &quot;Sur les Rives&quot; best of his books&mdash;&quot;she had read them all many
+times&mdash;and especially that marvellous description of Camille's return to
+her husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maurice walked for miles down the hard glaring white road. It was the
+most uncomfortable thing he could think of doing, and when you are
+determined to enjoy nothing there is a certain voluptuous satisfaction
+in a maximum of unpleasantness. The air was burning and solid. An
+occasional convolvulus drowned in dust straggled in weary clinging grace
+by the roadside&mdash;a pathetic symbol, he reflected, of the pale refined
+irrelevant women who fade ineffectually beside the highways of life. He
+thought of Marthe with her urgent pulsating rhythm, the rhythm he
+remembered bitterly, that had brought him here. He wished vindictively
+that she were beside him, the hard burning surface of the road biting
+through the soles of her shoes. He would walk on and on till there were
+blisters on her feet and her steps were lagging. His teeth were set in
+the grim satisfaction of revenge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the country,&quot; he would say. &quot;Do you feel the health-giving sea
+breeze you told me about?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped suddenly. Walking towards him was the lady. The offensive
+sunshade was over her head, but her veil was up. She was, he supposed,
+forty-six&mdash;no, forty-four. Her eyes were wide apart, dark and indolent
+and long&mdash;brown or blue they might have been. Her face was wide and so
+was her mouth with lips like curtains drawn across the teeth. Her
+cheek-bones were high and her skin, like marshmallow, was marbled with
+the bright yellow lights and bright blue shadows of early afternoon.
+There was a curious grace about her broad solid figure, an unhurried
+indifferent grace, as if she said to herself, &quot;I shall please at my own
+time.&quot; She was not pretty. Her clothes belonged to her as essentially as
+her limbs.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice took off his hat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forgive me, Madame, but I think that we are both living at the Hotel
+Bungalow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think so, too,&quot; she said drily.</p>
+
+<p>He thought that she thought that he was taking a liberty, which made him
+suppose that she was not quite a lady, which made him accuse himself of
+vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>And then she laughed, and his accusations, both of her and of himself,
+fled.</p>
+
+<p>They walked back together and he explained to her just how much he hated
+the sea, the heat, the Hotel Bungalow, the cook, and Marie Aim&eacute;e's
+footsteps. He explained how anxious he had been about her&mdash;how he had
+longed to see her face&mdash;how much her sunshade had depressed him&mdash;how her
+lace veil had been a personal enemy.</p>
+
+<p>She said that she adored the country....</p>
+
+<p>He told her that only in big towns could you find peace or flowers.</p>
+
+<p>She said the Hotel Bungalow had &quot;un caract&egrave;re assez sp&egrave;cial....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not listen to her comments&mdash;they were mere breathing places. On
+the subject of the sea he was, he thought, almost witty, with a touch of
+real indignation.</p>
+
+<p>She said the sea was her passion....</p>
+
+<p>He decided that she was an obstinate woman&mdash;ent&ecirc;t&eacute;e. How ridiculous to
+love the sea&mdash;especially for some one who pretended to like the country.
+The two were practically incompatible. Could she explain her point of
+view?</p>
+
+<p>The sea, she said, was such a wonderful escape....</p>
+
+<p>He was thrilled. A thousand explanations of her presence at the Hotel
+Bungalow jostled one another in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he quite understood what she meant about the sea. It had a
+certain spaciousness and it did, so to speak, quarantine you from life.
+For instance, in a rowing boat, it was impossible to feel the importance
+of being a snob.</p>
+
+<p>That was not, she said, exactly what she meant....</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was annoyed. He was accustomed to people who were proud to share
+his meanings.</p>
+
+<p>Madame would perhaps be able to explain....</p>
+
+<p>It was not, Madame murmured, a question of being able to explain, but of
+being able to interrupt....</p>
+
+<p>Maurice flushed and relapsed into sulky silence. He watched his
+companion trotting by his side, taking three little steps to each one of
+his. He took a childish pleasure in making his strides as wide as
+possible, upsetting the rhythm of her walk. The brim of her hat hid her
+eyes. He felt that his uncertainty as to their expression gave the
+matter an interest that it did not intrinsically possess. Even if she
+were smiling, what did it matter?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Monsieur anything more to conceal from me?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice capitulated. It was a delightful formula. He wished that he had
+thought of it himself. It was she, he said, who had been hiding things
+from him. Her eyes, for instance. All this time he had been wondering
+about the expression of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you deny the potency of the country,&quot; she sighed, &quot;the
+miracle-working country, which compels a young man of twenty-seven to
+wonder about the expression of an old woman of forty-four.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame,&quot; he said, &quot;I am very old. I have ceased to take myself
+seriously. You are very young, for you can force others to treat you
+with curiosity and respect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She reminded him that eight minutes ago he had taken himself seriously.
+&quot;It was you who made me,&quot; he retorted, &quot;you have given me back my
+youth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They went on like that for quite a long time&mdash;gallant lawn-tennis&mdash;long
+base line rallies with an occasional smash. And then he said that he
+must be indiscreet&mdash;specifically so. Why had she come to St.
+Jean-les-Flots?</p>
+
+<p>It was, she explained meditatively, an escape (he noticed that it was
+the second time that she had used that word). The Hotel Bungalow was
+very clean, the food was good, the air was marvellous....</p>
+
+<p>She pulled herself together.</p>
+
+<p>When you took a holiday, she said, you had to make a careful choice
+between old acquaintances and new ones. Which was likely to be the more
+tiring? She herself always went to new places at the wrong time of year.
+Then it was a case of friendship, or nothing. The people who visited
+watering places out of season were always either impossible or
+enchanting. Very often amusingly impossible and temporarily enchanting,
+but so much the better. There is a certain safety in the transitory.</p>
+
+<p>Is Madame married? Maurice asked abruptly. It was the sort of question
+that had to be asked brusquely, or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes&mdash;No&mdash;Yes. That is to say, I have a husband. He will probably come
+here for a day or two later. He is tr&egrave;s comme il faut.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely you do not blame him for coming to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is magnificent, but it is not life. One is not always young enough
+to permit oneself these phantasies. At fifty-six it is silly to waste
+two days visiting some one you don't want to see. But there, Edmond is
+like that. Oh! the stability when he says 'my wife.' It is superb. It
+must be grand, too, when he says 'ma maitresse'; he has the property
+sense. And how he adores women, woman, all women, any woman. Even
+sometimes me. And when he doesn't, he keeps the habits. Toujours des
+petits soins. He never goes out of training, even at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He sounds charming to live with.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes. That is it. He is charming. One cannot bear it. To have the
+five-finger exercises of his irresistibility played on one. To be the
+stiff piano on which he practises but never plays. It is too much. And
+one remembers the days when one was the concert grand. Pouf. It is not
+agreeable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Maurice knew that she was going to say a great many
+other things.</p>
+
+<p>But they had reached the Hotel Bungalow. Regretfully they parted.</p>
+
+<p>He thought that she was a very remarkable woman indeed.</p>
+
+<p>She thought how like her husband he was. Her husband twenty-five years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner she still was in black and white. Black covered with filmy
+laces, soft and shadowy and mysterious. After dinner they sat on the
+terrace and looked out at the inky relentless sea.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Being sensible is no good at all,&quot; she said with sudden passion.
+&quot;Courage is the only helpful virtue; when I married I was young and very
+pretty and I had thought about life a lot. I knew that in men fidelity
+had the importance that they gave to it. To a few&mdash;very few&mdash;it
+matters&mdash;but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing
+at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk&mdash;squalid, if
+you like&mdash;but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on
+the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both
+sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved
+women&mdash;<i>psychologically</i>. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real
+sin against marriage. He was a great lover, an artist. Every woman was
+to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist. The
+colours and the sounds he got were marvellous. Sometimes he would try
+impossible subjects&mdash;for fun&mdash;but always he could bring some sort of
+harmony out of everything. Ma foi, it amuses me to watch him now&mdash;now
+that it is difficult, and he is fifty-six and I don't love him&mdash;but
+then, when everything was easy and he was twenty-seven and I cared&mdash;then
+it was&mdash;well, it was different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The way that her voice opened and shut reminded him of a sea anemone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not the way to talk to a stranger, is it?&quot; she said abruptly,
+&quot;but I feel as if I had known you for a long time. For twenty-five
+years, to be exact,&quot; she added.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied. He longed to tell her about Marthe.
+For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to
+make. He wondered why.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bon soir, Monsieur,&quot; she said, and she walked up to bed with a
+characteristic lack of pause or hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>Maurice woke up&mdash;was woken up&mdash;knowing that he had something to look
+forward to. Sleepily he wondered what it was while patterns spread over
+his semi-consciousness&mdash;dreamily he saw Marthe in a filmy lace dress
+over black and he felt himself trying to play on a grand piano, every
+note of which was a sea anemone. Then he woke up completely, and with a
+delightful rush he remembered Madame and all of the marvellous things
+that she had told him and all of the significant things he had not yet
+said to her.</p>
+
+<p>He walked down to breakfast whistling. In the courtyard he patted the
+dog and lifted the patron's son on to his shoulder, then he asked the
+patronne if the cook had a name and whether he might some day come and
+watch her churn butter. In the dining room he praised the coffee, and
+admired the geraniums. St. Jean-les-Flots must have a particularly fine
+soil for geraniums, and what air! Why, he felt a different man already.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Marly&mdash;he had discovered her name&mdash;did not appear till lunch.
+They bowed to one another, and each talked a little to the waiter. It
+was delightful to keep their pleasure at arm's length. Coffee on the
+terrace brought them together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are right,&quot; she said, &quot;the country is an impossible place. It makes
+one talk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love the country,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then the sea. It is always going on without you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a passion for the sea,&quot; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would like to wring the neck of the cook, chloroform the dog, buy
+Marie Aim&eacute;e some lawn tennis shoes, and have a daily box of flowers from
+Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They shall be ordered at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should also like,&quot; she was looking out to sea, &quot;to fill the hotel
+with people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You flatter me,&quot; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; she added, &quot;it would be simpler to go away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Simpler but impossible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why impossible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The air is unique. The Hotel Bungalow....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please don't,&quot; she begged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, for the first time in my life I am becoming discreet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, my friend, believe me. It was merely that you, too, found it
+difficult to interrupt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not want to interrupt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There you had an advantage over me. I was longing to bring your
+remarks about the sea to an untimely end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her laugh was the most confidential thing in the world. You felt as if
+she had given you an unlimited credit of intimacy. He thought that she
+was looking ten years younger in her creamy cr&ecirc;pe de Chine dress, with
+her big straw hat, which seemed to have conquered, without an effort,
+the perfection and simplicity of the absolute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it called?&quot; he asked fingering it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cr&ecirc;pe surprise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He asked her to describe its lines, but she refused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ne parlons pas robes,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>They decided to go for a drive.</p>
+
+<p>The cocher explained that he had lost his wife, but that &quot;Lisette &eacute;tait
+un tr&egrave;s bon petit cheval.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They laughed&mdash;at him, at one another, at the sun, at the sea, at
+everything. He told her about the convolvuluses, and she said he ought
+to write a book.</p>
+
+<p>He told her his name.</p>
+
+<p>She puckered her forehead a little, and looked to him for help.</p>
+
+<p>He explained rather stiffly that he had written three novels, a book of
+short sketches, a book of light verse, and a phantasy on Algeria.</p>
+
+<p>She asked what they were called. He told her.</p>
+
+<p>She asked which was the best.</p>
+
+<p>He said that &quot;Sur les Rives&quot; had the best things in it. Perhaps it was
+less finished than some of the others, but it was on a bigger scale, the
+conception was more interesting.</p>
+
+<p>She asked what the conception was.</p>
+
+<p>He told her that it was about a woman who, out of affection for her
+husband, and deep intrinsical virtue, refuses to become the mistress of
+the man she passionately adores. He goes away and she gives herself to
+the first person she meets with a look of him. Her original great
+struggle has exhausted all her powers of resistance.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Marly was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is true,&quot; she said, &quot;for big things we have big resistances, and for
+little things little resistances. And so we live our lives in small weak
+lapses&mdash;not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering
+our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf,&quot; she made a
+little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. &quot;We occupy the
+places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl
+in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we
+occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We
+dissolve into air.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not you,&quot; he said. &quot;I feel it. You are so independent, so sure. Where
+are your hesitations? Your very doubts are challenges to truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Challenges to truth,&quot; she said. &quot;It is a nice phrase.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Driving back into the sunset they were silent. He wrapped her cloak
+round her, and once he kissed her hand, but it didn't feel as if it
+belonged to her. Her thoughts had taken her right away out of his
+presence, out of the carriage beyond the sunset. Where had they taken
+her? He wondered.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That night she came down, dressed in glowing apricot&mdash;&quot;fold after fold
+to the fainting air.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As always, her clothes seemed part of her, without ends or beginnings,
+flowing from her, a streaming enhancing accompaniment. He asked her if
+her dress were nymphe &eacute;mue or feuille morte. He was proud of knowing
+those two names. She said it was neither. He begged her to tell him, but
+she refused rather abruptly to discuss it. He said he loved her
+clothes&mdash;that he would like to know....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pour l'amour de Dieu, ne parlons pas robes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He wondered at her irritability, but he obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>They went out on to the terrace. The sea was black and angry, all the
+waves at cross purposes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is your name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What will you say when I tell you that I love you, that I want you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You won't tell me because you will know that I don't want you to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was a part of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you want me to?&quot; he was urgent&mdash;harsh with desire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because it all happened twenty-five years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He didn't understand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because&mdash;because there are some things you can't do twice&mdash;like your
+book, they are the big things that create a strength of resistance.
+Because they are the beautiful things that belong to our dreams. Because
+they are of a magic fabric, into which you can weave no facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was dark and he could not see her. The end of his cigarette was a
+bright spot in the night. The sea and the wind were the counterpoint of
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He felt unreal and remote and small. A tiny strand in the vast design of
+destiny.</p>
+
+<p>She got up and walked in. He did not move.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you for the flowers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sun was glittering frivolous and cynical.</p>
+
+<p>The box he had ordered from Paris had arrived. First there was a mass of
+Juliette roses&mdash;gilt and velvet&mdash;then a staircase of sweet peas,
+flame-coloured, coral, crimson, magenta, purple, bronze and black.</p>
+
+<p>Both together they drank in the blaze of colour.</p>
+
+<p>Ecstatically he said to her,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can't thank <i>me</i>, can you? They are too beautiful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps not,&quot; she said, &quot;but it was beauty unleashed by you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with adoring eyes. She gave you phrases which lit
+torches in your soul.</p>
+
+<p>They walked down the beach together. The sea was light and mutinous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How untransparent it is,&quot; he said, &quot;lapis lazuli and turquoise and
+chrysoprase&mdash;no emeralds or aquamarines, or sapphires.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How are we to get in our purple without an amethyst?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what comes from not reading the Book of Revelations,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>They saw big, dissolving, poisonous jellyfish in the sea, mysteriously
+without lines&mdash;and tidy slabs of jellyfish on the beach. They found a
+starfish, and wondered who came to dance a sword dance round it. They
+picked up shells that looked as if they had fallen out of fading sunsets
+or glimmering dawns&mdash;they looked into pools of shutting and opening sea
+anemones.</p>
+
+<p>They never noticed a sardine box or an old boot.</p>
+
+<p>They were happy.</p>
+
+<p>Over her head was a scarlet paper sunshade. It looked like a huge
+tropical flower.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula,&quot; he said&mdash;and his eyes opened to her like a magic trap door.</p>
+
+<p>That night they stayed indoors.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me the things that life has given you,&quot; he said, &quot;the things that
+have made you so rich.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I am rich,&quot; she said, &quot;it is from the things that <i>I</i> have given.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;but why do you impoverish yourself at my expense?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please,&quot; she said, &quot;don't talk about that. There are in all of us
+exposed places&mdash;you can call them pain or romance&mdash;Sehnsucht or
+memory&mdash;but they are the sanctuaries of our hearts&mdash;they cannot be
+violated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula,&quot; he said, &quot;you have made too much of life. You have made it into
+the sort of hope that is always a disillusionment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she murmured very low.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why were you so unpractical?&quot; his bantering tone revived her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have done for some one (even for you, perhaps) what I have never done
+for myself;&quot; she was smiling. &quot;I will tell you a story. There was once a
+man who loved me. He was born with everything&mdash;a marvellous name, great
+riches, beauty, a magnetic quality that I have never seen equalled. I
+always reproached him with having added nothing to his inheritance&mdash;no
+glory&mdash;no achievement&mdash;'I have spent,' he would say, shrugging his
+shoulders. 'Wasted,' I retorted tartly. 'If you like. I have never
+admitted my past or my future as barriers&mdash;or even frontiers&mdash;to my
+actions. I have lived without forethought or arri&egrave;re pens&eacute;e&mdash;without the
+weakness of regrets or the stinginess of precautions,' and then he
+turned to me&mdash;his eyes were half shut and his voice was muffled as if a
+flood were battering on the door of his dispassionateness, 'I have had
+everything in life except you,' he said. I smiled at him, a little
+sadly, a little cynically. 'It is I who have given you the greatest
+gift,' I said. 'I have given you a regret and an illusion. Vous avez
+donc tout eu.' That night he killed himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you, Paula, did you feel a murderess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, a saviour.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>She was dressed in pale lilac&mdash;the coolest lilac in the world. It
+rippled round her like loving caressing waves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is your dress called, Paula?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oasis,&quot; she said. &quot;'Indian summer' would have been a better name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you always want to know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am writing a book.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tant pis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was out of temper.</p>
+
+<p>The flowers arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Old-fashioned pink roses, coral carnations, purple stocks, pink pinks,
+mauve orchids, moss roses, patterned chintz-like phlox.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; she said, and for a moment she shut her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me about her,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marthe?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that her name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is vibrant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But of course. What does she look like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her hair is like a dirty new coin. You feel that you could polish it
+into brightness. Her eyes are like tea&mdash;yellow camomile tea. Her mouth
+is big and rather grave. There are electric waves of aliveness running
+all through her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not like her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All that irrelevant, interfering vitality. It is dangerous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And slumbering, mysterious magnetism, is that not dangerous?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a thunderstorm and the air got cool.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Marly had a headache and dined in her room.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The next day was grey&mdash;grey air, a grey sky, a grey countryside, a grey
+sea&mdash;not luminous, lustrous grey, but opaque chiffon drawn across the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Paula's flowers had arrived&mdash;lemon-coloured hollyhocks, blue and mauve
+and purple delphiniums, filmy love-in-the-mist, primrose antirrhinums,
+snowy Madonna lilies with golden middles, huge creamy roses, tiny yellow
+rosebuds, straggling larkspurs.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in a grey whipcord coat and skirt with a grey swathed
+turban. She looked distant&mdash;on the brink of disappearance&mdash;not so much
+as if she were going to travel but as if she were going to vanish.</p>
+
+<p>She regarded the flowers with grave concentration. It was as if she felt
+for them a stern passionate devotion. She took one of the white roses
+and stroked it&mdash;as if it were a shy mother with her first child. Then
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to go for a long walk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They walked for miles and miles. The mist sprinkled her hair with
+dew-drops. It looked quite white. Her eyes were deep and brooding and
+you couldn't catch them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula,&quot; Maurice said, &quot;how remote you are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Am I?&quot; she said. And it made her more remote than ever.</p>
+
+<p>He walked desperately, as if each step were an obstacle painfully
+overcome. She walked with a swaying unconscious rhythm, as if she did
+not know what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>She cut off his perfunctory attempts at conversation with a
+monosyllable. When they got home they were both tired.</p>
+
+<p>They each decided to have a hot bath and rest before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in very severe perfect black, marvellous lines, waiting
+to be sculpted.</p>
+
+<p>He told her so.</p>
+
+<p>She pursed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in front of the fire in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me a little more about your husband?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I tell you? I know him so well. You see, I have loved him and
+hated him&mdash;I have become indifferent to him&mdash;and I appreciate him. But I
+have had nothing from him that a hundred other people have not
+had&mdash;except, perhaps, his name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marly?&quot; she laughed. &quot;Marly is not even my own name. We are all of us
+so very monogamous when we love, proprietary, exclusive, jealous,
+whatever you like to call it. Edmond's character was like a pergola.
+You walked in and out. There were always roses and jasmine, clematis and
+wisteria, peeps of the garden and patches of the sky&mdash;but never a shut
+door&mdash;never one. Oh,&quot; there was a breaking passion in her voice&mdash;&quot;how I
+longed for four walls, for a lock and key, for a dungeon, for bars.
+'Don't you know,' I would say to him, 'that much trodden territory
+becomes neutral?' and he would smile and say, 'you are generous.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maurice was looking into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor little Paula,&quot; he said. &quot;But you were his only wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said, &quot;a law-given copyright.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula,&quot; he said, &quot;will you do something for me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder. There are surely no somethings where we are concerned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want you to describe several dresses to me. Your own perfect divine
+dresses. I want them for my book.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I am to be made use of, am I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were flashing.</p>
+
+<p>He was not looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;I am going to steal some of your genius.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had left him. He was not surprised. She never said &quot;Good-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The next day she had gone&mdash;very early, leaving no address, no letter.</p>
+
+<p>She had, he heard, left his box of flowers at the village infirmary. He
+knew that that day it was to have been full of verbena, sweet geranium,
+sweet briar, thyme, myrtle, lavender and single roses....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Marthe had insisted that he should come with her to Lally. He was
+feeling foolish and fascinated&mdash;dressing was evidently a religion with
+the most solemn rites in the world. The gravity and concentration of
+every one astounded him&mdash;the firm vendeuse refusing to allow her cliente
+any freedom of choice. The pathetic cliente pining in vain for forbidden
+fruit&mdash;the hopelessly ugly and unrewarding, who alone were permitted to
+follow their fancies. Patterns were discussed in hushed but intense
+undertones, faint but all-important modifications were offered by the
+vendeuse to bridge the gulf between the figures of the mannequins and
+those of the clients. The brave longing of a squat pigeon to have the
+model reproduced &quot;textuellement&quot; was resolutely suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>Marthe was discussing her vendeuse's child....</p>
+
+<p>And then suddenly Maurice saw Madame Marly. She was without a hat and
+scattering her terrified staff with her eye.</p>
+
+<p>She came straight to him, her voice was mocking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maintenant, je peux donner des renseignements &agrave; Monsieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not know,&quot; he blurted, &quot;I had no idea,&quot; and then as the ultimate
+significance of their meeting disentangled itself from the immediate
+embarrassment,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God, I have found you.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Mlle. de Marveau married the Comte de C&eacute;ly.</p>
+
+<p>The Comtesse de C&eacute;ly wanted an escape and became Madame Lalli.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lalli wanted an escape and became Madame Marly&mdash;for Paula was
+always Paula.</p>
+
+<p>And then she met Maurice and her youth. Twenty-five years of age and
+experience and disappointment fell from her. But to keep her great
+illusion she offered her big resistance....</p>
+
+<p>And then the tiny knife turned in the tiny wound. The unconscious
+buzzing machine touched the exposed nerve&mdash;the silly, absurd, irrelevant
+name.</p>
+
+<p>The lover in pursuit of the beloved became the novelist examining the
+dressmaker, seeking for information. When professional meets
+professional.</p>
+
+<p>This time she capitulated for she ran away.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That night Maurice wrote to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula, I love you. I loved you always. I loved you invulnerable, wise,
+fortified beyond the wiles of men. How much more do I love you now with
+your one weak spot&mdash;so weak, so absurd that it can only be kissed, and
+laughed at and adored.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paula, my own, the twenty-five years have never existed. There is only
+one immortal moment&mdash;and that is to come.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beloved, best beloved, only beloved, I want you so badly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;MAURICE.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, you have got to describe me several dresses for my new book.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XIII"></a><h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>AULD LANG SYNE</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Harold Nicolson</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>It was delightful to be back in England after two and a half years. Two
+and a half years of India, of pomp and circumstance and being envied, of
+heat and homesickness and loneliness. How starved she had felt&mdash;starved
+of little intellectual coteries with their huge intellectual
+sensations&mdash;starved of new books and old pictures and music, of moss
+roses and primroses and bluebell woods, starved even into the
+selfishness of coming home, urged away by Robert, who did not know how
+to be selfish. Thinking of him made her feel very tender and very small.
+His iron public spirit, his inevitable devotion to duty, unconscious and
+instinctive and uncensorious, combined with a guilty sense that her
+youth and beauty had been uprooted by him, and put into a dusty distant
+soil. He was more convinced than any one of the importance of books and
+music and intellectual interests (he never read and did not know one
+note from another) because they were important to her and had therefore
+received a consecration they could never have had by merely being
+important to him. It was all so very simple&mdash;What she admired was
+beautiful; what she laughed at was funny; what she loved was divine&mdash;And
+she belonged to him&mdash;Robert. It was a miracle that found him every night
+on his knees in humble gratitude. She had, he thought, been so
+wonderfully good, walking on his red baize carpets as if they were
+fields of flowers, learning Sanscrit with passion and pretending, with
+what seemed to him complete success, and to them, absolute failure, that
+she liked Anglo-Indian women. When one by one his staff were
+incapacitated by love, he never complained. It made them of course
+useless, but how could they help falling in love with her? It would have
+been so unnatural if they had not. And when she told him&mdash;and to do her
+justice she knew that she was telling him the truth&mdash;that she was not
+worthy to do up his shoe laces&mdash;he would laugh and kiss her hand and
+send up a little internal prayer to God to be able to do something to
+deserve his wife.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder he was always urging her to go home&mdash;haunted as he was by the
+feeling of having put her in a prison and, no wonder, not having his
+iron character, she had finally succumbed&mdash;as she so often succumbed to
+his unselfishness.</p>
+
+<p>How she was loving England! The wet, heavy air&mdash;the sky curtained with
+clouds&mdash;the drenched leaves&mdash;the saturated flowers&mdash;the damp breathing
+earth&mdash;the distant lethargic sun. She could feel a pulse in the sopping
+soil and her heart beat with it.</p>
+
+<p>Finding her friends too was such an adventure. What struck her most
+about them was that they seemed so stationary. There they were, just as
+she had left them, doing the same things, thinking the same things,
+saying the same things&mdash;fixed points with their lives revolving round
+them, seeming to have lost the capacity for independent motion.</p>
+
+<p>She and Robert were not like that. Thank God, they were still pilgrims.
+After all, her life had been a big spacious thing in spite of India,
+because of India and, even more, because of Robert. Only she did not
+want to think about it now. Just to go on repeating to herself: &quot;I'm at
+home. I'm in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she was going to stay with St. John. How excited she would have been
+four years ago. How her heart had beaten when she heard his footsteps,
+how she had thrilled when he had said &quot;dear&quot; to her. She remembered the
+care he had taken of her, the beautiful considerate devotion he had
+always shown her when she was longing so passionately for other things,
+trying with all her might and main to make him lose his head. <i>How</i>
+badly she had behaved. She could wonder now dispassionately whether he
+had <i>ever</i> been in love with her. On the whole, she thought, he never
+had. If she had not been married&mdash;it was a silly &quot;if.&quot; The most he had
+said was &quot;you make things very difficult,&quot; not a very satisfactory
+avowal when you came to think it over calmly. But she remembered how it
+had thrilled her at the time&mdash;what a blank cheque of possibilities it
+had seemed. She remembered, too, the evening when he had talked
+seriously to her&mdash;very gently, very tenderly, very gravely. She had
+thought he was going to say, &quot;I don't want to be made unhappy,&quot; and,
+instead, he had said, &quot;I don't want you to be unhappy.&quot; That had been a
+nasty one. How she had lashed him with her tongue! What inexhaustible
+reserves of icy acid she had brought forward.</p>
+
+<p>She had tried to hurt him as much as ever she could. How hurt had he
+been? She wondered. It was all such very ancient history. And yet he had
+gone on being fond of her. Fonder and fonder&mdash;men were so odd.</p>
+
+<p>So many things had happened since then. She had been away and he had
+lost an uncle and inherited a property. And now she was going to stay
+with him. Last time they had met, two years ago, he had talked to her as
+if they had had a boy and girl affair thirty years before. She had been
+very much amused but she had hidden it; hiding your amusement was an
+essential part of being fond of St. John&mdash;a rule of the game, so to
+speak. That was one of the delightful things about him; to like him at
+all you had to be really devoted to him and when you had reached that
+stage, all of the qualities that would have been intolerable in other
+people became subtly lovable. Somehow they seemed to creep under your
+wing, compelling you to give them the protection of your own intimate
+understanding. It was impossible not to make pets of St. John's defects.
+Ariadne remembered the way he had always tried to keep her out of moral
+draughts, how he had hated to see her in a room with any one of a
+doubtful reputation, how her habit of taking off her hat in motors in
+towns got on his nerves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if it tires my head,&quot; she would say, and he would explain very
+seriously what an intimate gesture it was.</p>
+
+<p>Then as she always rested before dinner, people would come to tea with
+her in her bedroom. St. John didn't like it at all. There was to him
+something inherently disreputable about the horizontal. If she were too
+tired to sit up in an armchair, she was too tired to see any one&mdash;except
+him, of course, who understood her (which was just what he didn't do).</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But my back does ache so easily. After all, if I were really ill you
+wouldn't mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How ill do I have to be before I can abdicate the perpendicular in the
+presence of a young man?&quot; He consoled himself with the thought that she
+was extremely, exceptionally innocent. She told him that thousands of
+people were extremely, exceptionally innocent. It was a fact which could
+never be explained to juries. St. John doubted it. He believed in a vast
+number of rules to which all of the people he liked and most of the
+people he knew were exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>The train drew up at the platform. Ariadne got out. The footman
+explained to her that his Lordship was so very sorry not to be able to
+come to the station, but he was attending a cattle show.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; said Ariadne, and she felt it.</p>
+
+<p>She got into the brougham&mdash;it was so characteristic of St. John not to
+use a motor in the country&mdash;which had that delightful, almost forgotten,
+smell of broughams, and drove through an avenue of oaks up to the fine
+old Georgian house, dignified and mellow and lived in&mdash;a house proud of
+its cellar and its stables&mdash;of its linen and its silver&mdash;a house where
+men were men and women were women&mdash;where the master hunted and sat on
+the Bench, and the mistress embroidered and looked after the
+household&mdash;each having his separate functions and the one joint one of
+propagating the race.</p>
+
+<p>In the hall, St. John's housekeeper, in a black taffetas apron,
+welcomed her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Lordship would be most distressed not to have been there when her
+ladyship arrived, but the cattle show&mdash;&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; said Ariadne, and hinted at a quite special awareness of
+the importance of Cattle Shows.</p>
+
+<p>Her bedroom was immense&mdash;there were lavender bags in all the drawers,
+and flowers on the dressing table, the fire was lit and there was
+boiling water in the shiny pale brass can. Her maid, the housekeeper
+explained, was sleeping in the dressing room. On the table by her bed
+was a glass box of biscuits, &quot;The Wrong Box,&quot; &quot;Omar Khayyam&quot; and Lucas
+Malet's last novel.</p>
+
+<p>Ariadne was smiling with happiness. Talk about the joys of the
+unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding
+everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?
+There was a tap at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's I.&quot; (St. John never said &quot;It's me.&quot;)</p>
+
+<p>She threw open the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do come in,&quot; she said, and then, with a little stab of extra pleasure,
+she wondered if he would be shocked by her flimsy pink dressing gown and
+her bare feet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;St. John,&quot; she put out both her hands. &quot;I <i>am</i> happy to be here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took them and held them quite tight, then he kissed them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little Ariadne,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>It was, she supposed, a way of getting over the dressing gown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You look younger than ever,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's my hair being down,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He asked her if she had had a good journey, and whether the housekeeper
+had seen that she had everything she wanted.</p>
+
+<p>She asked him if the cattle show had been a success.</p>
+
+<p>He said he really must dress for dinner, and so must she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ariadne,&quot; he put his hand on her arm, &quot;it's good to have you here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was an emotion welling up in his voice that surprised her. He
+turned his back and left the room rather hurriedly. She realised that he
+had almost kissed her. Would he have said, &quot;I'm sorry, but you looked
+such a baby,&quot; or, &quot;Forgive me, it was seeing you again after so long,&quot;
+or, &quot;Ariadne, can you forgive me? I lost my head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She plumped for the baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be
+going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain
+tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to
+topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could
+have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and
+never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the
+responsibility would have been his&mdash;thus obliterating the irritating
+daily spectacle of his untarnished blamelessness.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he had never been in love with her. She had always been buoyed
+up by little things she wouldn't even have noticed in some one she
+hadn't cared about. If there were acute disquieting moments when the
+troublante quality of her loveliness tossed him about
+unmercifully&mdash;weren't they moments that any stranger might go through
+sitting next to her at dinner? No&mdash;the truth always had been that he was
+really fond of her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm glad now,&quot; she smiled to herself, &quot;how lucky that we can't always
+sculpt our own relationships.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She went down to dinner&mdash;in the huge hall full of armchairs and cushions
+and antlers and comfort St. John stood with his back to the fire smoking
+a cigarette which he threw into the grate when he saw her (St. John
+invariably threw away his cigarette when you came into the room and then
+asked your permission to light a new one. In her mind's eye Ariadne
+always saw him opening the door for his wife after a violent scene with
+her).</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear,&quot; she said, &quot;what a divine house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The wing you are sleeping in was built by the fifth Lord....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The staircase was designed by....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The mantelpieces in the drawing room....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After dinner I will show you....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was announced.</p>
+
+<p>She tucked her hand under his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you going to take me in to dinner, St. John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; he smiled at her.</p>
+
+<p>The dining room was big enough to reduce the immense pieces of Georgian
+silver&mdash;beautiful they were&mdash;to reasonable proportions.</p>
+
+<p>St. John said there were some very fine pieces of Queen Anne which he
+would show her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was,&quot; she murmured, &quot;nothing like Queen Anne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The attentiveness of the footman and even of the butler did not seem to
+her to be entirely confined to their wants.</p>
+
+<p>St. John asked her questions about India, which she answered as she
+answered travelling Europeans&mdash;correctly, concisely, and without any
+frills of vocabulary. It was quite possible, she reflected, that St.
+John wanted to know the answers to his questions. That was the worst of
+being abroad so much, you were always either trying to tell things it
+bored people to hear, or else they were determined to hear things that
+it bored you to tell. Her mind wandered to the curious tide-like quality
+of interest, the way it advanced and retreated in a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>St. John was explaining what a quiet life he had led. Perhaps, to her,
+it would have even seemed dull. (This to him was rhetorical paradox, and
+to her an obvious truth.) She did not know, he said, what it meant to
+feel that the land belonged to you&mdash;to see your own flowers growing,
+your own calves being born&mdash;to feel yourself surrounded by your own
+people, for whose happiness and welfare you were responsible.</p>
+
+<p>Ariadne said that inheritance was a sacred trust (it was wonderful how
+easy she found it to talk like St. John).</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;that is just it&mdash;a sacred trust. Why, I hardly ever go
+up to London now, and when I do, I feel quite homesick till I get here
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They got up from dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall we go and sit in the library?&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>They sat one on either side of the fire. She felt like an ancestress or
+a family portrait. The rosy haze of her tea-gown looked strange and
+alien fluttering in the huge leather armchair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a wisp you look,&quot; St. John said. She remembered how satisfactory
+her tininess had always been to him. &quot;I think I could blow you away with
+a puff of smoke.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a limpet really,&quot; she laughed, &quot;think how I have stuck to your
+life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank God,&quot; he affirmed fervently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you still a great flirt, St. John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have surely not forgotten the way you played fast and loose with
+me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ariadne,&quot; he was using the firm voice she knew so well, &quot;you mustn't
+talk like that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you did. Don't you remember that dinner you gave when we went to
+the L&mdash;&mdash;'s ball and you never danced with me till seventeen minutes
+past one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear, I was saving you up. The joy after all the duties.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You never told me so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There were a lot of things I never told you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tried so hard to make you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was so hard not to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;St. John,&quot; she said, &quot;the things you didn't tell me, were they true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they were true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had got up and knelt by her chair.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand on his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;St. John,&quot; she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That
+he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That
+what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry
+had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection?
+Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than she had ever
+heard it before. Of course he had not been in love with her. She had
+never realised it as clearly as to-night. For a moment he put his face
+in her lap, then he kissed her hands&mdash;reverently, in memory of his great
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I smoke a cigarette?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his chair.</p>
+
+<p>She was, he said, a wonderful friend.</p>
+
+<p>So, she said, was he.</p>
+
+<p>They talked about his family and her family&mdash;a little about their mutual
+friends and a lot about friends of his that she had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>They talked about furniture and gardens.</p>
+
+<p>There were, he said, a lot of subjects on which he wanted her advice.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very domestic, their two armchairs and the fire&mdash;the dying
+fire. He must, she supposed, be imagining that they were married, seeing
+her at the head of the table, in the family pew. She wondered if he
+would have let her re-set the family jewels. Perhaps his mind had
+reached the nursery. He was dreaming of children, his children, her
+children, their children.</p>
+
+<p>Dear St. John. She looked at him tenderly. She longed to explain what an
+unsuitable wife she would have made him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are you thinking about?&quot; her voice was very gentle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was thinking of the cattle I bought to-day, and wondering what sort
+of fencing I should put up at the bottom of the drive. Ariadne, you
+remember how gregarious I used to be; well, you can't think how
+perfectly happy I am living here alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Smiles were popping out of her face shamelessly. No sooner had she kept
+one out of her eyes than it reappeared on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear St. John,&quot; she said, &quot;I do love you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked, she thought, a little alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not like that, that is all over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite over?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite&mdash;are you glad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it makes you happier,&quot; and then, &quot;No, I'm damned if I'm glad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, St. John,&quot; she was laughing a little.</p>
+
+<p>He looked puzzled, even rather disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>She had broken the rules and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How lucky you didn't say that to me four years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't,&quot; he said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was lighting her candle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow,&quot; he said, &quot;you will choose the colour of the garden gates
+and advise me about the fencing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That <i>will</i> be fun.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shivered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you cold?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One is always cold after India.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took her to the door of her bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night&mdash;God bless you,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>She put her two hands on his shoulders and, bending forward, she kissed
+him lightly. It was a cruel way of showing him that she didn't care any
+more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a revengeful woman I am, punishing him after all these years,&quot; she
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't see it like that.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I deserve her trust,&quot; he said to himself, and then his
+thoughts, let out to graze, returned to the subject of fences.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Robert,&quot; wrote Ariadne, &quot;I am homesick for India.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XIV"></a><h2>XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO TAXI DRIVES</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">Paul Morand</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<a name="XIVa"></a>
+<h5>I: SUNSHINE</h5>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, my dear, how delightful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always wonder,&quot; she murmured, &quot;about accidental and sudden meetings.
+They are a sort of nervous shock and you always feel that you are
+looking for something that you've mislaid and that you don't seem able
+to find again until you've parted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How depressing you are. Looking for mislaid intimacy, do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I saw you I simply felt&mdash;Margaret, thank God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, you old humbug.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And for you who specialise in intimacy and the unexpected, it is simply
+disgraceful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You used to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you a reformed character?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A reformed experimentalist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, after all I <i>am</i> glad to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then let us take a taxi and drive round the Bois.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not reformed at all. If you were, you would say, 'I've got to
+try on,' or, 'there are so many things I must do before lunch,' or 'I am
+only in Paris for such a short time.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're all true.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course&mdash;that sort of thing is always true. The point is, is it
+relevant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Talking of specialists. Do you still specialise in the irrelevant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have never understood what that word meant when applied to my
+activities. I have still kept my sense of proportion, if that is what
+you are driving at?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Virginia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is still Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you love her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very often.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not all the time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly not. How then should I have my opportunities of discovering
+that I loved her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does she like your method?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder. Sometimes it gets on her nerves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is ridiculous to pity Virginia. Every one adores her and she meddles
+about in people's lives to her heart's content.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always pity women who care for charming men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why&mdash;because charming men are fickle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, because they are vulnerable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charm is the dragon's blood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the leaf always falls somewhere.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the weak spot is vanity&mdash;which is no use to one at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the way, how is Michael, talking of charming men. Or, were we
+talking about them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, I don't like Michael.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is too complete.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you usually tell women that you don't like their husbands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, they usually tell it to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that what you suggest that I am doing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, please. You know I didn't mean that. It was just an idiotic
+jeu de mots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, be careful; if you are serious you will turn my head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would love to turn your head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why is it that you always make me indiscreet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that I inspire people with the happy illusion that I am not
+going to take what they say seriously.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that is it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the way, what was India like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I stayed with Ariadne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she happy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Radiant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Loving pomp?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Loving Robert.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Robert is the most wonderful man in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, he wanted to marry you; why didn't you marry him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought his pedestal such a precarious foothold in life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If Ariadne can balance on it for a moment, it must be pretty firm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a lovely pedestal. You can see for miles from it, and it is as
+comfortable as an armchair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ariadne always had a rare eye for a cushion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ariadne is a perfect wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, it is absolutely essential that I should see you once every
+twenty-four hours for the rest of my life. You will, therefore, not
+think me too matter-of-fact if I ask you your immediate plans?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am staying here three more days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn&mdash;sixteen hours gone already, I am off to Deauville.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I am going back to London where it will all begin again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How grand it sounds to be a melodrama.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, do you know that I love you a great deal?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know that you are a great flirt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. That makes my real love so very exceptional and precious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Virginia know that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Virginia almost understands everything, but of course she can't afford
+to admit it, or one would behave too impossibly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew, may I tell you something very serious?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, if you don't expect me to profit by it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I used to understand almost everything, and I went on stretching and
+stretching till it broke, and now I understand nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you are right,&quot; he twinkled at her, &quot;perhaps I had better not
+marry Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you trying to make me unhappy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, dearest, I might even be serious if I thought that it would
+make you happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens, it's one, and I am lunching at one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Margaret, promise never to mislay our intimacy again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I promise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That evening there was a knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Monsieur a fait dire que c'&eacute;tait un bouquet pour Madame.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An immense bunch of balloons followed him into the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For Margaret who&mdash;in spite of everything, because of
+everything&mdash;understands everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matthew,&quot; she wrote, &quot;how young you make me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then she murmured to herself:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Virginia!&quot;</p>
+<br />
+
+<a name="XIVb"></a>
+<h5>II: LAMPS</h5>
+
+<p>&quot;I love you so.&quot; The wheels of the taxi were the counterpoint to his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the good of my turning away when every bit of him bites into my
+consciousness?&quot; she thought.</p>
+
+<p>The road stretched ahead of them like cir&eacute; satin with a piping of
+lights. She had changed her position a little, restless under the
+constraint of his eyes. A lamp lit her up for him, her face white and
+drawn, her eyelids pulled over her eyes like a heavy curtain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One feels that one could skate down the street,&quot; she murmured, &quot;it
+looks like stuff worn thin with time and use&mdash;the shabby shiny surface
+of the night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On and on they went.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can't get anywhere,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>A lamp lit up her face.</p>
+
+<p>It looked so weary and impotent as if she had abdicated the uneven
+struggle with circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>On they raced, down the slippery ribbon of road.</p>
+
+<p>There was a bump and she fell towards him. He stretched out his arm and
+held her firm and secure. He wanted her to feel that it was a rampart
+and not an insidious outpost of passion quick to take advantage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me kiss you once, for God's sake,&quot; his voice was harsh.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face towards him. The passing lamp showed her resigned,
+pitying, tender.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't look like that,&quot; he said&mdash;sharp with the things he had wanted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sorry,&quot; her voice was velvety and comforting.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another lamp, there was a faint smile on her lips&mdash;breathed as it
+were from him. He huddled into his corner, hurt by her compassion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hate to see the moon,&quot; she said, &quot;cynical and prying&mdash;an eavesdropper
+of a moon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again a light gave him a fleeting vision of her&mdash;photographed on to his
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>Her deep dark eyes, heavy with distress, the corners of her mouth
+repudiating the misery of the moment. She put her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't,&quot; she said, &quot;there is in life such an incoherent mass of
+interwoven strands. And perhaps something comes and tears them all to
+bits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was chanting&mdash;as if she were singing him a lullaby&mdash;then it
+became light again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait till the next lamp,&quot; she said. &quot;And you will see in my eyes the
+old laughter that you used to love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They turned down a side street and there were no more lights.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly the taxi stopped.</p>
+
+<p>She got out. Her pale gold coat was a continuation of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her brooding eyes away from him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you for taking me home,&quot; she said; her voice had broken. She
+looked back&mdash;a smile turned on to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>He heard her latch key. The door opened and shut.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XV"></a><h2>XV</h2>
+
+<h3>A TOUCH OF SPRING</h3>
+
+<h4>[<i>To <span class="smcap">W.Y. Turner</span></i>]</h4>
+
+<p>The sun was streaming through the curtains silhouetting a strange
+bloated pattern on the chintz, breaking through an opening and cutting a
+deep yellow slit in the carpet. She lay in bed subconsciously awake,
+subconsciously asleep, her thoughts drifting into dreams, her limbs
+merging into one another. &quot;This is happiness,&quot; she murmured to herself,
+and feeling consciousness invade her, she clutched at the perfect
+moment, and it was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling at her defeat she stretched herself luxuriously like a cat and
+poked her toes out into a cool expanse of sheet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is nice,&quot; she thought, &quot;to have the whole bed to myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She curled herself up and lay for a few moments watching the sun
+catching little patches of air and turning them into rainbow dust. Then
+she rang. Her maid let in such a flood of light that she was forced to
+shade her eyes. An unabashed cuckoo broke into the chorus of birds,
+glorying in being a solo part and despising them for mixing and
+intertwining their notes.</p>
+
+<p>She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug;
+without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping
+like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of
+the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown&mdash;a tingling
+quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay
+on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking
+across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling intimately to herself she got into her bath, wondering vaguely
+at the miracle of water, enjoying impersonally the cool whiteness of her
+body, doing tricks of perspective with her arms and legs.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed slowly with indolent rhythmical movements, indifferently
+aware of her effortless inevitable perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Even more slowly she walked down the staircase out through the open
+window on to the grey terrace. Somehow she felt that she was violating
+the morning, forcing the human on to the divine. Sipping the day she
+walked towards the almonds with their pink blush of blossom bursting
+through the brown; turning round her head she saw the double cherry, its
+branches nearly breaking under their load of snow. And at the roots of
+every tree uninvited primroses and violets were crowding out the earth.</p>
+
+<p>She followed the winding terraces towards the gleaming river, past
+fluttering daffodils and wandering narcissi, over riotous anemones and
+bright sturdy scyll&aelig;, shaking showers of diamonds off the grasses as she
+went.</p>
+
+<p>The river lay like a long satin streamer, a curling ribbon dropped on
+the meadows. And everywhere, hidden and vibrating, was an urgency of
+life: buds bursting into blossom, birds bursting into flight.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the veil was lifting from the morning, the sun was rubbing the
+bloom off it as a child rubs sleep from his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She retraced her steps, putting down her feet with the delicate
+fastidiousness of a cat in order not to tread on a flower. &quot;I'm alone
+with you,&quot; she said shyly and ecstatically to the day. Never before had
+she had the Spring to herself. Always there had been the children (now
+on a visit) dragging plans and occupations, games, picnics, and bicycles
+across the pure joy of living, or her husband like a violin very close
+to her ear tearing her nerves to shreds with poignant urgent beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Looking dispassionately at her life, it seemed to her a slum of human
+relationships, airless, over-crowded, a dusty arena where psychological
+acrobats perform by artificial light. And always that dragging of the
+general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the
+personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers
+prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning,
+feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to
+catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some human desire.</p>
+
+<p>This not being a wife, or a mother, or a friend, or a beloved, or even
+herself, but a tiny part of the universal, this surely was happiness. To
+be at one with the morning, to belong to this frontierless world of
+nature, to be coaxed into flower by the sun, to be a strand in some
+unknown design, how much better than the weary steering of your life
+between the Scylla of your ardent futile longings and the Charybdis of
+some senseless malignant providence.</p>
+
+<p>She took her lunch into the wood. The bluebells were still in bud and
+hadn't yet swept everything before them in a headlong rush of waves that
+never broke. She sat in an open space on a patch of velvety moss,
+surrounded by tree trunks and waving windflowers and peeping primroses
+and violets, all diffident forerunners of Spring, shyly enjoying the sun
+before being submerged in that all-conquering flood of blue.</p>
+
+<p>She caressed the ground with her hand and watched little gusts of wind
+play hide and seek with the sun. &quot;I don't believe I've ever been alone
+before,&quot; she thought, and she stretched out her arms into the air,
+initiating them into freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the sun began to sink, throwing a riotous tangle of crimson
+and gold streamers to salute the earth. &quot;They are hauling down the flag
+of my perfect day,&quot; she thought with a stab of poignant sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>The sky became the colour of a primrose stalk and as transparent as
+green glass. Before touching the horizon it dissolved into violet
+powder. The colour was being blotted out of everything; one after
+another the flowers went out like lights; only the white cherry seemed
+phosphorescent in the gathering darkness. A thick white mist was
+relentlessly invading everything, climbing higher and higher, enveloping
+her in its cold, wet clutches.</p>
+
+<p>Bewildered and miserable, she struggled forward through the extinguished
+beauty of the world. A thin white sickle of a moon painted on the sky
+looked cynically down at her. Stumbling, shivering, she hurried blindly
+along.</p>
+
+<p>The big stone hall was flickering in the blaze of an immense fire,
+peopled with strange, unreal, clustering shadows. In front of it stood a
+man in a fur coat. He turned towards her with outstretched arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My darling, what have you been doing out without a coat? Look at your
+hair all white with mist and your sopping dress. I can't trust you to
+look after yourself for one day, can I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him as if he were a ghost. A look of blankness and horror.</p>
+
+<p>He gathered her up and carried her to her bedroom. Putting her in a
+chair beside the fire he knelt down and pulled off her shoes and
+stockings.</p>
+
+<p>She felt as if something were breaking inside her. Cold unrelieving
+tears were running down her face.</p>
+
+<p>He was kissing her hands and her feet, murmuring little caresses,
+enveloping her in the glow of his love. And still she couldn't feel any
+warmer.</p>
+
+<p>Putting his arms tight round her he held her close to him, her cold wet
+face nestling in his neck.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall never leave you alone again,&quot; he whispered passionately, but to
+his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground with a thud.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment her old maid came in. &quot;Poor wee thing,&quot; she said, &quot;don't
+you be worrying and fretting yourself. It's just a touch of the Spring.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="XVI"></a><h2>XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>FIDO AND PONTO</h3>
+
+<p>Fido was a Dalmatian&mdash;of the race described by some as blotting paper
+and by others as plum pudding dogs. Every line of his body had been
+formed by hundreds of years of tradition. You can find his ancestors in
+tapestries and petit point in Italian primitives and Flemish family
+groups, nestling in voluminous satin petticoats, or running at the heels
+of skating children&mdash;moving in sedate indifference beside the cort&egrave;ge of
+a pope, or barking in gay derision at the tidy Dutch snow. Not &quot;a dog&quot;
+or &quot;the dog&quot; but &quot;dog&quot; unspecified and absolute. True, till 1700 it was
+largely a matter of silhouette, the lissom outline was there, but with a
+certain variety of colouring. Then the 18th century stepped in and made
+spots de rigueur&mdash;Dalmatians invaded new territory. They conquered the
+kingdom of china and occupied a commanding position in coaching prints.
+An unaccompanied post chaise, deplorable in life, because unknown in
+art, and the expression &quot;carriage dog&quot; came into use for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and
+when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart
+race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly
+mother of strong and hideous children&mdash;progress. Motors were invented.</p>
+
+<p>If machinery had a conscience, what a procession of ghosts would it not
+be haunted by&mdash;ghosts of white fingers and humming spinning wheels,
+ghosts of parasols&mdash;stiff pagodas of taffetas or rippling fountains of
+lace&mdash;ghosts of victorias and barouches and tandems&mdash;ghosts of spotted
+streaks of lightning bounding forward with the grace of cats and the
+speed of Derby winners, capering with fastidious frivolity between
+yellow wheels.</p>
+
+<p>Dalmatians, console yourselves, you are in good company. Beside you
+walks the ghost of civilisation herself&mdash;surrounded by the phantom forms
+of courtesy and leisure and all the lost company of the divine
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>Cause and effect, demand and supply, where does the vicious circle begin
+and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside
+in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with
+transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down
+their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world
+that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained&mdash;to die of a broken
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>When I first saw him, he was a puppy&mdash;a thin lanky puppy, waiting to be
+filled in by life, a mere sketch of the masterpiece he was to become.
+Even in those days he had heavy black charmeuse ears, marvellous thick
+rich satin they were, and tiny dark rims to his eyes&mdash;a setting of
+pencilled shadow. How am I to describe his spots? The wonderful
+distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched
+neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the
+looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves
+into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.</p>
+
+<p>To see him move was to see motion made concrete&mdash;to see him run was to
+realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being
+a human.</p>
+
+<p>At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his
+whiteness. His bark was low and deep and resonant&mdash;a church bell of a
+bark&mdash;it
+<ins class="correction"
+title="Transcriber's note: original reads 'remainded'">reminded</ins>
+you
+less of a 'cello than all 'cellos&mdash;except M. Casal's&mdash;remind you of a
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>He had the divine irrelevant grace of a cat. Always he was showing off,
+practising his paws, curling and stretching and pirouetting, letting
+himself go like an arrow out of a bow, circling on the lawn like a
+swallow above water, giving you daily a thousand illustrations of how
+much you would have lost by only having 100 masterpieces in bronze of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Living with Fido was a daily revelation of absolute beauty. He was the
+key to the secret of Phidias and Ucello Pascal and Mozart.</p>
+
+<p>But he was alive, warm and gay and moody&mdash;joyous and absurd&mdash;full of
+little confiding gestures&mdash;a nose pressed under one's chin, or a paw
+laid in alluring appeal on one's hand. Withal he was detached with the
+detachment of his separate universe&mdash;a divine world of smells and sounds
+and ever new adventurous possibilities, unspoilt by memory and
+untarnished by experience.</p>
+
+<p>Dogs are the best company in the world&mdash;I would watch Fido abandoning
+himself to each moment of the day, the victim or the hero of a hundred
+impulses, torn by competing smells and sounds as we are torn by
+overlapping warring emotions and ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open
+eye and when you said &quot;Fido&quot; his ears would answer you, taut with
+response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is
+there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry,
+distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it&mdash;a hypnotic
+conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre.</p>
+
+<p>Fido was a daily, hourly delight.</p>
+
+<p>I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and
+realise&mdash;with fresh acuteness&mdash;his infinite variety. There was to me
+something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very
+perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical
+masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied
+revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love
+gives mortality to everything.</p>
+
+<p>Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer
+trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His
+heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged
+his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie
+there indifferent to my trembling caresses.</p>
+
+<p>Fido died.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted.
+Fortunately most of my friends have &quot;pets,&quot; griffons that look like
+tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated
+prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and
+seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a
+creation of the Gods.</p>
+
+<p>If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would
+avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing
+machine reaches the hidden nerve.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you like dogs?&quot; people would say.</p>
+
+<p>LIKE!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot; I would answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How strange. I adore animals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>ADORE!</p>
+
+<p>Oh the verbs of the untouched. And then, in spite of everything, because
+of everything, a Dalmatian once more invaded my life&mdash;the life that I
+had so resolutely determined never again to expose to any dog. What is
+invulnerability but a pis-aller? Which of us, given the choice between
+perfect peace and imperfect love would hesitate for one moment?</p>
+
+<p>When Providence gave me Ponto I accepted him with hungry passion, with
+nervous propitiatory prayers to the Gods.</p>
+
+<p>He was a stray dog, masterless and collarless, an erring emigr&eacute; of
+civilisation and he came to me. At first I did not dare look&mdash;my heart
+was beating so fast. I was frightened of being radiant. I was frightened
+of being miserable.</p>
+
+<p>And then I turned to him. He was bigger than Fido, with longer, stronger
+legs. His ears were not quite black, there were two little white spots
+on them, his eyes were not set in pencilled rims. But he was beautiful,
+as beautiful as a Greek athlete&mdash;to see him run was to see the Olympic
+games, and in the house he would curl and stretch and tangle up his
+paws, and put his head on my lap and reassure me with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Once more I lived with motion made concrete, with beauty made
+absolute&mdash;once more a wagging tail brought the inexhaustible dot of
+gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>Ponto had finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense
+of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a
+Dalmatian, privilege entails certain obligations.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he lacked something of Fido's moody charm, of his frivolous
+pathos, of his absurd joyousness, of his enchanting vanity.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was just Fido's youth that he lacked, and his
+irresponsibility. There was a certain gravity about Ponto&mdash;a perfect
+dignity. His fastidiousness had gone beyond the stage of selections, and
+had reached the stage of exclusions. But he never lost his manners, or
+his manner.</p>
+
+<p>Always he said &quot;Good-morning,&quot; and &quot;Good-night.&quot; If I was embarrassed,
+or worried, he would pretend not to notice it, but if I was happy, or
+sad, he would show his sympathy in a hundred ways&mdash;putting his head on
+my lap, or cutting absurd capers to distract my mind.</p>
+
+<p>And then one day I went away.</p>
+
+<p>I told Ponto when I said good-bye to him that it would be some time
+before I saw him again.</p>
+
+<p>How was I to explain partings to him? The monstrous r&ocirc;le that geography
+plays in our lives? I just told him that I loved him, that his image was
+in my heart, that our separation was only the preparation of a glorious
+meeting when old-remembered delights would merge into newly discovered
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>He listened to me while I stroked his heavy charmeuse ears. He licked my
+hand, knowing that with my whispering words, I was trying to console
+myself as well as him.</p>
+
+<p>Then I left him quickly.</p>
+
+<p>They wrote to me that he had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>They wrote to me that his master had reclaimed him.</p>
+
+<p>But I know that he is mine.</p>
+
+<p>For I have made a great discovery.</p>
+
+<p>What I love belongs to me. Not the chairs and tables in my house, but
+the masterpieces of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is only a question of loving them enough.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/15156.txt b/15156.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..145a959
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15156.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4837 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Balloons
+
+Author: Elizabeth Bibesco
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2005 [EBook #15156]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLOONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kathryn Lybarger and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BALLOONS
+
+BY
+
+ELIZABETH BIBESCO
+
+_Author of "I Have Only Myself to Blame," etc._
+
+NEW YORK
+
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+_1922_
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+   I  HAVEN                                                9
+        _To Clarence Day, Jr._
+
+  II  TWO PARIS EPISODES                                  21
+        _To Anthony Asquith_
+          I: THE STORY OF A COAT
+          II: BALLOONS
+
+ III  COURTSHIP                                           27
+
+  IV  "DO YOU REMEMBER...?"                              29
+        _To Leslie Hartley_
+
+   V  THE MARTYR                                          37
+        _To H.G. Wells_
+
+  VI  A MOTOR                                             53
+        _To Alice Longworth_
+
+ VII  THE MASTERPIECE                                     60
+        _To Harold Child_
+
+VIII  TEA TIME                                            67
+        _To Sylvester Gates_
+
+  IX  THE END                                             78
+
+   X  MISUNDERSTOOD                                       83
+        _To John Maynard Keynes_
+
+  XI  COUNTERPOINT                                        92
+        _To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta_
+
+ XII  VILLEGIATURA                                       102
+        _To Marcel Proust_
+
+XIII  AULD LANG SYNE                                     132
+        _To Harold Nicolson_
+
+ XIV  TWO TAXI DRIVES                                    147
+        _To Paul Morand_
+          I: SUNSHINE
+          II: LAMPS
+
+  XV  A TOUCH OF SPRING                                  155
+        _To W.Y. Turner_
+
+ XVI  FIDO AND PONTO                                     161
+
+
+
+
+BALLOONS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HAVEN
+
+[_To CLARENCE DAY, JR._]
+
+
+"You should only," we are told, "wear white in early youth and old age.
+It is very becoming with a fresh complexion or white hair. When you no
+longer feel as young as you were, other colours are more flattering.
+Also, you should avoid bright lights and worry."
+
+Here, the beauty specialist reminds you of the specialist who says in
+winter, "Avoid wet feet and germs." In spite of both, we are still
+subjected to sunshine and anxiety and rain and microbes.
+
+But there are risks which the would-be young can and should avoid.
+Surely Miss Wilcox ought to have known better than to flop down on the
+grass with an effort and a bump, clasping (with some difficulty) her
+knees because Vera, who is sixteen, slim and lithe, with the gawky grace
+of a young colt, had made such an obvious success of the operation!
+
+It is better not to sit on the grass after thirty when sprawling at all
+is difficult, let alone sprawling gracefully.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox! At seventeen she had been a pretty, bouncing girl with
+bright blue eyes, bright pink cheeks and brighter yellow hair. All the
+young men of the neighbourhood had kissed her in conservatories or
+bushes and to each in turn, she had answered, "Well, I never!"
+
+Then an era of intellectual indifference to the world set in. She read
+Milton in a garret and ate very little. When addressed, she gave the
+impression of being suddenly dragged down from some sublime pinnacle of
+thought. This was the period of absent-mindedness, of untidiness, of
+unpunctuality, for she was convinced that these three ingredients
+compose the spiritual life. But it was not a success. True, her cheeks
+lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent
+whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food,
+ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss
+Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.
+
+She discovered that men were her only interest--probably she had always
+known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was
+glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he
+belonged to that strange, tropical species--the other sex.
+
+Unfortunately, Miss Wilcox, who was practical and orderly, knew just
+"what men liked in a woman." It was, it appeared, necessary to be
+bright--relentlessly bright, with a determined, irrelevant cheerfulness
+which no considerations of appropriateness could check and it was
+necessary to have "something to say for yourself" which in Miss Wilcox's
+hands, meant a series of pert tu quoques of the "you're another"
+variety. Her two other axioms, "Don't let them see that you care for
+them" and "feed the beasts," were alas! never put to the test as no man
+had ever considered the possibility of being loved by Miss Wilcox and
+the feeding stage had, in consequence, never been reached.
+
+Nevertheless, in defence of her theses, Miss Wilcox was rough-toughed in
+public, while in private, she studied recipes and articles on cooking.
+As hope gradually began to give way to experience, Miss Wilcox came to
+the conclusion that she frightened men off. They regarded her, she
+imagined, as cold and indifferent and unapproachable. "I don't cheapen
+myself," she would say, forgetting her conservatory days. In her heart
+of hearts, she imagined herself in humble surrender, laying her strong
+personality at the feet of a still stronger one and being gently lifted
+up on to a pedestal. It was curious, she thought, that her wonderful,
+unique gift of tenderness should go unperceived. But how is one to show
+that one is tender? It is so difficult for a maiden lady, living alone.
+She saw visions of a huge man with whimsical, smiling eyes, who after
+seeing her two or three times would call at her cottage. He would stand
+in the door and simply say, "Ellen," and she would put her head on his
+shoulder and cry gently while he stroked her hair. "Does my loving you
+make you sad, little one?" he would say, and she would answer, "No, no,
+they are tears of happiness."
+
+Miss Wilcox thought it would be delightful to be called "little one."
+And then, rather nervously and tremulously, she would murmur, "I am
+afraid I am not very beautiful," and he would laugh a deep, joyous laugh
+and say, "To me, you are the most beautiful woman in the world."
+
+But it never happened. Even the chinless curate, whose voice without
+consonants gave the effect of an intoning bumble-bee, never took
+advantage of her suggestions (frequently repeated) that he should drop
+in to tea.
+
+She tried to learn lawn-tennis and chess, but driving a ball into a net
+and studying problems in the Sunday papers becomes very monotonous. It
+was extraordinary how little provision life seemed to have made for
+superior people with fastidious tastes, whereas an empty head and a
+pretty face conquers the world! Miss Wilcox was very proud of the
+epigram, "empty heads and pretty faces." She used it frequently, more
+in sorrow than in anger. Vera was an excellent example. She was
+incapable of "conducting a conversation," she never read a book, but
+simply because her eyes sparkled and somehow or other, she always
+reminded you of a Shepperson drawing, she was invariably surrounded by a
+host of adorers. She was indifferent to the axioms, "boys will be boys"
+and "gentlemen are different." In her philosophy, "girls would be boys"
+and the difference between the sexes was simply one of what you might
+and might not do.
+
+"A positive savage," Miss Wilcox would explain and then, "You should be
+more womanly, dear; men like a womanly woman." And Vera's eyes would
+sparkle maliciously, for men undoubtedly did like Vera.
+
+I do not know at what moment in life, if ever, we realise that we are
+neither George Sands nor Juliets. Of course, if we are not beautiful, we
+recognise early that beauty is nothing. What are features? The only
+thing that matters is to have charm and expression. Then comes that
+horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism. Is it possible that, though
+we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either? That we will have to
+go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to
+the triumphantly ugly? Miss Wilcox knew that she was not exactly
+clever. But after all, what is prettiness and "men don't like clever
+women." So she consoled herself with the thought that though her manner
+"permitted no liberties," the warm tenderness of her true nature must be
+apparent to the really discerning.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox! She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and
+lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof. She would have liked to have been
+seductive and a little wicked, but she had found it easier to be
+dignified and very good. Easier but no more satisfactory. Evidently
+charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe. A
+dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.
+
+Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox. Lady Mary (Vera's mother) was always
+asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all
+sorts. On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the
+curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite
+and almost guilty pleasure to her. Was it, she wondered, altogether fair
+to let him think that Mr. Simpson loved her? But she did enjoy it so
+much, the nervous agonising sense of expectancy and then the sudden hot
+blush. "Their little secret," Sir Harry called it and though, of course,
+it was very wicked of her to let him continue under a misapprehension,
+it was so difficult to clear the matter up, as, the more she protested,
+the more confused she became, the more he was bound to think that there
+was something in it.
+
+Poor Miss Wilcox, battling with her conscience when Mr. Simpson's
+passion was an invention of Vera's to whom old maids and curates were
+simply stage properties. Vera with her long legs and her laughing eyes
+and her happy, unimaginative youth--how was she to know that the
+Simpsons of life stand for romance and mystery and longings unachieved?
+To some people the impossible is impossible. One fine day they wake up
+in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands
+and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.
+
+Miss Wilcox was not like that. She couldn't settle down to decorating
+the church and organising village entertainments. She woke up every
+morning sure that something was going to happen and went to bed every
+night dissatisfied in proportion to her confidence.
+
+And then, quite close together, two things did happen. Miss Wilcox was
+left a small fortune and Vera became engaged to be married.
+
+The wedding, of course, was a great dramatic event. The preparations
+engulfed everybody. What flowers should the triumphal arches be made of
+and were the fair or the dark bridesmaids to be considered in the
+bridesmaids' dresses? Miss Wilcox gave her advice freely and tied cards
+on to presents but she felt unaccountably depressed. This, of course,
+was because dear little Vera whom she had known since a child, whom she
+had loved as a child, was leaving them and plunging into this strange,
+unknown adventure. What an uncertain thing marriage, what an elusive
+thing happiness! At nights she would dream of white satin figures
+shrouded in white tulle veils, of shy, passionate bridegrooms and shy,
+radiant brides. Sometimes she would see Vera's face and sometimes her
+own and often in the morning, she would find her pillow wet. "It will be
+you and Simpson next," Sir Harry teased her. But somehow the remark no
+longer pleased her and she no longer blushed.
+
+And then, one day she couldn't bear it any more. Without saying a word
+to any one she went to London. A thick orange fog greeted her, a
+wonderful, mysterious fog, creating immense prehistoric silhouettes, a
+fog which freed you from old accustomed sights and sounds so that your
+individuality seemed at last to be released and to belong exclusively to
+you.
+
+Gratefully Miss Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to
+her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement
+peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last
+she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back
+again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely she
+pushed the door open. The brightness blinded her, the sudden warmth made
+her feel dizzy. Weakly she sat on a chair. A sympathetic salesman asked
+her if he could do anything for her. "No, thank you," she murmured
+faintly, "if I might sit here a moment."
+
+Gradually she recovered and walked out again. The fog was thicker than
+ever. The traffic had stopped. People bumped into her with muttered
+apologies. Hesitatingly, wearily, she walked along. At last, she reached
+another jeweller's. Firmly, quickly she walked in. How was she to ask
+for what she wanted?
+
+"What can I do for you, Madam?"
+
+She looked up like a frightened animal.
+
+"I've lost my wedding ring," she stammered. "It was a broad gold one.
+I--I don't want my husband to discover it."
+
+How easy it was after all.
+
+The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of
+rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering
+them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her.
+It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and
+quite unlike herself.
+
+Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married
+ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There
+is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss
+Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. But
+still, she felt safer at the Ritz--there is something so conspicuous
+about a quiet hotel.
+
+The next day the fog had been cleared away and the sun, emerging after a
+day's rest, sparkled with refreshed gaiety. Miss Wilcox, in deep
+mourning, went out to buy new black clothes--lovely they were,
+intentionally, not accidentally black, filmy chiffons, rippling
+crepe-de-chines, demure cashmeres, severe, perfect tailleurs. Here and
+there touches of snowy crepe gave a relief suitable to deep unhappiness
+and her widow's cap, low on the forehead, was the softest and most
+nun-like frame to her face. Seeing herself in the glass, Miss Wilcox
+blushed with pleasure.
+
+"My husband was so fond of clothes," she murmured to the vendeuse with a
+break in her voice, "and he always said that nothing became a woman like
+black."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a little village on the Seine. An old grey church nestles among
+the huddling houses. A platoon of poplars guards the river, and little
+pink almond bushes spring out of patches of violets. Miss Wilcox,
+calling herself Mrs. Demarest, lives in a charming old house surrounded
+by box hedges, paved paths lead through beds of old-fashioned
+sweet-scented flowers, stocks and wall flowers and mignonette and moss
+roses, lavender, myrtle, thyme and sweet geranium. Mr. Demarest, it
+appears, could not bear the wonderful new varieties of huge, smell-less
+blooms.
+
+Miss Wilcox has never gone out of mourning, though she sometimes wears
+grey and mauve. Her gracious sweetness has made her much beloved in the
+village where her gentle presence is loved and honoured. She can often
+be seen bringing soup to some old invalid, or taking flowers to the
+church she loves to decorate. Her charity and her piety are revered by
+all. Sometimes in the evening she plays a game of cards with her
+neighbours or chess with the cure. It is known that a rich man from the
+adjoining town proposed marriage to her, but she continues to mourn her
+late husband with profound devoted fidelity. She is too unselfish to
+force her grief on to others, but every one knows that her heart is
+broken. Sometimes she talks of her sorrow--very gently, very
+uncomplainingly, and there are always flowers in front of the photograph
+of her husband on her writing table. He must have been a magnificent
+man--huge, with whimsical smiling eyes. Every one in the village feels
+as if they had known him. They have heard so much about him. He had only
+seen Miss Wilcox three times when he walked into her cottage. Standing
+in the doorway--"Ellen," he said, and she went to him--
+
+"I suppose I knew it was for always," she explains gently. "It has been
+a short always on earth--but so happy, so very happy."
+
+All the girls of the village go to Mrs. Demarest before they marry. Her
+wise counsel and the radiant memory of her happiness lights them on
+their way.
+
+"I have had everything," she says, "and now I have found peace."
+
+It is the severity of suffering bravely borne. She has called her house
+"Haven."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TWO PARIS EPISODES
+
+[_To ANTHONY ASQUITH_]
+
+I: THE STORY OF A COAT
+
+
+"Le Printemps a brule cette nuit." The news greeted me when I was
+called. It had no special significance, but spread through my
+semi-consciousness into meaningless patterns. Then I woke up. "Comme
+c'est terrible," I said, "quelle chance que ca s'est fait la nuit!" I
+saw visions of leaping flames and angry reds reflected in the sky.
+
+Then I remembered. It was at the Printemps that I had chosen my divine
+coat. They had promised faithfully to send it me to-day. The loveliest
+coat in the world--"fumee de Londres," the salesman had called it, and
+in fact, it was the colour of the purple-grey smoke that ascends in
+solid spirals from factory chimneys. There were stripes too of silvery
+grey chenil which made a play-ground for lights and shadows. In shape it
+was like an old print of a coachman driving a four-in-hand, long with a
+flapping cape, and the lining was the colour of the sky when the sun has
+set.
+
+I saw my coat giving new life to the dying flames. Tongues of fire were
+darting down the lines of silvery grey chenil, greedily eating up the
+smoky back-ground. Finally, a mass of ashes--purple-grey like their
+victim--was carried by the wind into the unknown. All day long my coat
+became more and more beautiful. The texture was solid smoke and the
+stripes were shafts of moonlight. How it shimmered through the mirage of
+my regrets.
+
+When I got home that afternoon I found a cardboard box. The inspector of
+the Printemps, knowing that I was leaving for England, had brought me a
+coat from the reserve stock which was not kept in the shop. Infinitely
+touched, my heart overflowing with gratitude, I wrote a love letter to
+the Printemps.
+
+Then I looked at my coat. The silvery stripes turned out to be black and
+white, giving a grey effect. The texture of the back-ground was not
+purple smoke, but rather scratchy wool. Evidently it was no longer the
+coat of my sad dreams. In becoming once more "la creation" of the
+Printemps it had ceased to be the creation of my imagination.
+Resurrection is a dangerous thing.
+
+My coat which was once a legend is a reality again. It has travelled
+from fairy-land to life. Now it is a symbol. Isn't this the story of the
+Life of Christ?
+
+
+II: BALLOONS
+
+All my life I have loved balloons--all balloons--the heavy English sort,
+immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light,
+gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of
+them. How well I remember when I was little, the colossal effort of
+blowing up the dark red, floppy India rubber until it got brighter and
+brighter and more and more transparent, though it always stayed opaque
+enough to hold the promise of still greater bigness. And then the
+crucial moment when ambition demanded an extra puff and a catastrophe
+became ever more imminent.
+
+And now, when I suddenly see a huge bunch of wonderful bloated tropical
+grapes, overpowering some old woman in the street, I feel so happy! In
+Paris, of course, they are quite different--balloons have much too much
+flavour to be international--they are smaller and lighter in colour and
+gayer and more reckless--they always look as if they were out on a
+spree, just waiting to break loose from the long string by which they
+are tied, in a huge multi-coloured sunshade, to a stick. There is
+something very independent about French balloons--you feel you couldn't
+make a pet of one.
+
+But I am telling you things you know already, instead of getting on with
+my story.
+
+It was the sort of spring day when all the buds look like feathers and
+the sun has been bathing in milk. I was walking down the Champs Elysees,
+sniffing secret violets in the air and feeling as joyous as if the world
+were entirely full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by
+whom I would never see again. In the distance a barrel organ became more
+and more distinct and as I drew nearer and the noise grew louder, I
+wanted to dance and sing. It was in tune with my mood. A symbol of the
+crescendo of living.
+
+And then, in the distance, I saw Cousin Emily crawling towards me like a
+black beetle with her half-shut eyes that see everything except beauty
+and innocence. Though I avoided her and the day was as lovely as ever, I
+had become conscious that the world was inhabited and that there were
+people who didn't whistle--or want to whistle--in the streets.
+
+I tried to think of larks and primroses, but my thoughts were dragged
+back to thick, half-drawn red curtains, black woolen shawls and silver
+photograph frames. Then I had an idea. "I will buy a balloon," I
+thought. My spirits rose and my heart leapt. Should I buy a green one
+like a bad emerald, or a red one like wine and water, or a thick bright
+yellow one? White was charming too, and sailed up into the sky like a
+tight, round cloud--
+
+I reached the Galleries Lafayette.
+
+"Des ballons, s'il vous plait. Joujoux," I added. I was told to go
+straight on, to turn to the right and the left, to go up three steps and
+down three steps--but my mind wandered as it always does when I am
+listening to directions that I have to follow. By an unseemly scramble I
+got into an over-crowded lift. I seemed to be treading on children and
+reclining on tight, upholstered bosoms. At random, I chose the third
+floor and found myself among a forest of lamps. Desperately determined
+not to risk another struggle for the lift, I tried to find the
+staircase. At last, after endless enquiries and--it seemed--going back
+five steps for every three I had gone forward, I reached the toy
+department. Breathless, bedraggled, hot and exhausted, I clutched the
+arm of the first saleswoman I saw. "Des ballons, Madame," I gasped.
+
+She looked at me with contempt, "Les ballons, ca ne se vend pas, ca se
+donne."
+
+For a moment I was awed by the aristocratic magnificence of balloons.
+How superb, how reckless! Very humbly I appealed to her,
+
+"Pouvez-vous, voulez-vous me donner un ballon?"
+
+"Les ballons, ca ne se donne pas apres cinq heures," she said.
+
+I didn't press her. How could I? By how many thousands of years of
+tradition might not the habits of balloons have been fixed? Their lives
+were evidently strangely and remotely unlike our lives. Wearily I walked
+downstairs, not snubbed but humbled and a little awed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later I was walking down the Champ Elysees sniffing at the
+secret violets in the air. I had forgotten Cousin Emily and the world
+was full of primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by. Suddenly,
+at the other side of the street I saw a bursting sunshade of balloons,
+emerald and ruby, transparent white and thick, solid yellow, a birthday
+bouquet from a Titan to his lady. Reverently, lovingly, I looked at
+them, my heart full of joy, but I did not cross the street.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+COURTSHIP
+
+
+"I do love yachting," she said, "to see the sea change from aquamarines
+and diamonds to sapphires and emeralds, with thick unexpected streaks of
+turquoise. To sail away into the unknown, away from your own life----"
+
+She was looking dreamily in front of her to the blue beyond the mimosa.
+
+"The sea is jolly," he said.
+
+"To feel that you are leaving land behind you and your friends and your
+relations and your duties and what are called your pleasures. To be
+free," she murmured.
+
+"There's nothing like horses," he said. "Their very smell does you good.
+An hour's gallop before breakfast in summer, a twenty minutes' run with
+the hounds in winter----"
+
+A week later they were engaged to be married. I wondered whether he
+would take to yachting or she to riding or both to golf.
+
+I didn't see them for five years. And then, I met her at Melton. She had
+taken a house for the winter. "So he won," I reflected to myself.
+
+"Have you done much yachting lately?" I asked her.
+
+"Yachting?" she said, "why it's my idea of hell. I'm the worst sailor in
+the world. A sea as calm as a pond finishes me."
+
+"How is your husband?" I murmured weakly. "Is he coming down here to
+hunt?"
+
+"Tommy?" she laughed. "Why he's never known a horse from a cow."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"DO YOU REMEMBER----?"
+
+[_To LESLIE HARTLEY_]
+
+
+There are so many delightful things about being a bride besides actual
+happiness, little peaks of pleasure that gradually sink into the level
+of existence, unimportant, all-important things that never come again.
+To begin with, there is your wedding ring which keeps glistening up at
+you, unexpectedly making such an absurd difference, not only to the look
+of your hand but to everything else, as well. And there are your trunks,
+shiny and untravelled, with glaring new initials almost shouting at you,
+so very unlike other people's battered luggage with half obliterated
+labels sprawling over it.
+
+And trousseau clothes are quite unlike other clothes--not prettier,
+often uglier--but different. Your shoes and stockings match, not yet
+having begun that uneven race which, starting from the same mole, ends
+with a fawn-colored shoe and a grey blue stocking. Your hats go with
+your dresses and your sunshades with both. You have an appropriate
+garment for all occasions, instead of always being--as you once were
+and soon will become again--short of something. Altogether, there is no
+other word for it--you are equipped.
+
+And then you feel exhilarated and responsible--your jewels are still new
+and so is the strange, beautifully embroidered monogram on your
+handkerchiefs and underclothes. Also, for the first time in your life,
+you have a jet evening dress with a train and your maid calls you
+"Madam."
+
+Lucy was extremely pleased about all of these things. She was pleased,
+too, to have married a foreigner, to be sailing away into a new milieu,
+where she would be surrounded by the strange exciting faces of her
+husband's friends. It would be delightful to have nothing to do, but
+make yourself liked, to be automatically disentangled from all of your
+own complicated, complicating relationships with nothing around you but
+a new world to conquer. And how thrilled and curious every one must be
+about her. What sort of a woman had succeeded in catching dear old Tony!
+Tony, who was so delightfully, so essentially, a man's man. There had
+been Vivian, of course, but no one quite knew the rights and the wrongs
+of that and it was over anyway. Tony was so deuced unsusceptible (Lucy
+prided herself on being able to think in English), unsophisticated, too,
+about women, but with a sense of self-preservation like an animal's. And
+now he had gone and married an American and a Bostonian. Americans, one
+knew, were heiresses and Bostonians were blue-stockings. The lady, it
+appeared, was not very rich, but of course, Tony would never have
+married for money. It was all very puzzling.
+
+And then, Lucy imagined herself walking into a room full of strange,
+curious faces and some one murmured, "That is Tony's wife," and every
+one looked up. She was wearing a shimmering, silvery blue dress and she
+was looking her very, very best. An old lady told her that she ought
+still to be in school and a young man told her that she was a jolly
+lucky woman and Tony a jolly lucky man, by Jove.
+
+Lucy was sure that that was the way Englishmen talked.
+
+And on their way home, people agreed that they could understand any
+man's falling in love with her. Tony talked a lot about his men friends.
+Women meant nothing to him. He had, Lucy knew, once been engaged to a
+woman--Vivian, she had been called--rumour had woven a pattern of
+legends about it, but he had never seemed anxious to discuss it. People
+said he had behaved badly--but how was one to tell? Those things were
+always so complicated. Usually, every one ended by behaving badly. At
+any rate, the girl had made a brilliant marriage, which might or might
+not mean a broken heart. It was, Lucy thought tenderly, so
+characteristic of Tony to have sown such legitimate wild oats. An
+engagement contracted and broken off in gusty fits of honour.
+
+"You look very lovely," he smiled at her.
+
+She was shimmering in silvery blue, her eyes like cloudy star sapphires,
+her hair like primroses and ashes.
+
+In the motor she leant against him, a discreet gentle pressure. She
+always gave you a feeling of delicately intertwined reticencies and
+avowals, a faint New England flavouring which she had never lost.
+
+"I do hope they'll like me," she murmured.
+
+Dinner was a great success. Lucy loved her neighbours and her neighbours
+loved her, while secretly congratulating themselves on having always
+been right about Boston (which they had never visited and of which they
+knew nothing).
+
+After dinner a few guests trickled in for the tiny dance that was to
+follow. It was all very much as Lucy had imagined it, old ladies
+delighted by her youth, old men delighted by her prettiness. Every one
+saying that she was very un-American (by which they meant unlike the
+Americans they had known).
+
+Then, suddenly, a hushed silence grabbed hold of all the various
+conversations. Tony got up. His hostess was saying, "I want to present
+Mrs. Everill." Some one in a corner gave a little suppressed laugh,
+Lucy looked.
+
+She saw a thin, dark woman with charming irregular features and a figure
+which looked as if it had been put into her black velvet dress with a
+shoehorn, and she heard her say in a low voice which somehow seemed to
+creep inside shut parts of you, "Tony and I are very old friends." They
+were coming straight to her and then, next thing she knew was that voice
+again, saying, "Mrs. Everill, you must forgive me if I say that, for the
+moment, you are to me, just Tony's wife. But, of course, I know that to
+be that you must be a great many other things besides."
+
+Lucy knew that every one was looking at them, not at her, Lucy, the
+bride (and she had been so proud and happy--childishly happy--to be a
+bride), not at Tony, not even at Lady Dynevor, but at _them_, at the
+situation. It seemed to Lucy so indecent, so vulgar.
+
+"You will love Lucy, Vivian," Tony said quietly, and Lucy looked up at
+the charming, gracious apparition so dominant, with her beautifully
+friendly manner. Her eyes looked as if she could never find the bottom,
+as if tears were just going to well up and drown them.
+
+"Of course I shall," she said, and there was a little edge on her voice,
+as if it were going to break. That was the feeling she gave you, Lucy
+thought, of being on the brink of something, a tenseness like the moment
+when the conductor's baton is raised before you have been released by
+the music.
+
+"How ill you look," Tony was saying. Vivian laughed,
+
+"You always said that, do you remember----?"
+
+Conversation was buzzing again. Lucy turned to her neighbour. Through
+what he was saying, she could hear Tony--"your white velvet dress--do
+you remember...?"
+
+She got up to dance. The room seemed to whirl round her while she stood
+quite still.
+
+"Of course, we know all about Boston, Mrs. Everill," her partner was
+saying, "it produces beans and Cabots and blue-stockings--and brides,"
+he added, smiling.
+
+Tony and Vivian were still sitting on their sofa. As she passed, she
+heard Vivian laugh, "Do you remember?"
+
+The evening seemed to Lucy interminable. Tony was very good. He did his
+duty very nobly, dancing with every one, even his wife.
+
+At half-past one they went home.
+
+"How charming Lady Dynevor is," Lucy murmured.
+
+"Charming?" Tony looked puzzled. "Vivian?"
+
+It obviously seemed to him an almost grotesquely irrelevant, inadequate
+word. And then, feeling that something was expected of him, "She is a
+wonderful woman, loyal, faithful, a real friend."
+
+"She is very pretty," Lucy said.
+
+"Pretty, is she? I hadn't noticed it." Again he seemed puzzled, as if it
+were really too difficult to connect up these absurd adjectives with
+Vivian. Then an idea occurred to him.
+
+"You're not _jealous_, sweetheart, are you?"
+
+"No," she lied.
+
+"Vivian is--well, Vivian," he explained, making matters worse. And Lucy
+knew that if she had said "beautiful, fascinating, majestic," if she had
+used all the superlatives in the world, they would have seemed to him
+equally irrelevant and inadequate. But Tony was very much in love with
+his wife and she knew it and soon, in his tender, whimsical, loving,
+teasing way, he had made her perfectly happy again.
+
+She was standing in front of her dressing-table, her cendre
+hair--shadows shot with sunlight--falling like a waterfall over her
+shoulders. With one hand she was combing it, with the other she fingered
+a bundle of snapshots taken on their honeymoon--lovely snapshots, full
+of sunshine and queer, characteristic positions and expressions. They
+might, she thought, have been taken by a loving detective.
+
+Tony came in.
+
+"Do you remember," she said--and then, suddenly, with a wave of misery,
+she realised it. The phrase did not belong to her.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MARTYR
+
+[_To H.G. WELLS_]
+
+
+I, myself, have always liked Delancey Woburn. To begin with, there is
+something so endearing about the way he displays his defects, never
+hiding them or tidying them away or covering them up. There they are for
+all the world to see, a reassuring shop window full of frank
+shortcomings. Besides, I never can resist triumphant vitality. Delancey
+is overflowing with joie de vivre, with curiosity, with a certainty of
+imminent adventure. If you say to him, "I saw a policeman," his face
+lights up and so it would if you said "I saw a dog," or a cat, or a
+donkey-cart. To him policemen and dogs and cats and donkey-carts are
+always just about to do something dramatic or absurd or unexpected. Nor
+is he discouraged by unfailing regularity in their behaviour. Faith is
+"the evidence of things not seen."
+
+And then, too, he is so very welcoming. Not, of course, that he makes
+you feel you are the only person in the world because a world with only
+one other person in it would be inconceivably horrible to him, but he
+does make you quite sure that he is most frightfully glad to see
+you--all the gladder because it is such a surprise. Delancey always
+makes a point of being surprised. Also, though he is invariably in a
+hurry--being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life--he as
+invariably turns round and walks with you, in your direction, to
+convince himself that having met you in Jermyn Street is an altogether
+unexpected and delightful adventure. And he never feels, as I always do,
+that a five minutes' conversation is a stupid, embarrassing thing, too
+long for mere civility and too short for anything else. The five minutes
+are filled to the brim and off he rushes again, leaving me just a little
+more tired and leisurely from the contact. Delancey is the life and soul
+of a party--or perhaps I should say the life and body. He likes eating
+and drinking and talking to women and talking to men and smoking and
+telling a story. And if he does address his neighbour a little as if she
+were a meeting at a bye-election, open air, he at any rate never
+addresses her as if she were a duty and no one had ever wanted to kiss
+her.
+
+To Delancey all women have had lovers and husbands and children and
+religious conversions and railway accidents. Old maids and clergymen's
+wives adore him.
+
+I don't know what it was that made him write originally. Perhaps it was
+his name--Delancey Woburn sounds like the author--or the hero--of a
+serial. Or it may have been that his exuberant desire for
+self-expression had burst through the four walls of practical
+professions. He had, I believe, considered the stage and the church.
+Journalism would have seemed to me the obvious outlet but he preferred
+literature. "Creation is such _fun_," he would explain, beaming. And, of
+course, he was tremendously successful. Delancey was designed on a
+pattern of success.
+
+That was one of the obvious defects I was talking about. Delancey has
+missed his failures. He has fought and been defeated but he has never
+longed and been frustrated. In his case, romance is realism. He has only
+known happy endings.
+
+Naturally he is not an interesting writer. How could he be? And,
+naturally, he is a successful one. How could he help it? Delancey writes
+for magazines in England and America. I, myself, never read magazines,
+but occasionally he sends me one and every twenty stories (I think it is
+twenty) become a book. The English ones were about scapegraces and
+irresistible ne'er-do-wells, ancestral homes with frayed carpets and
+faded hangings in which penniless woman-haters (the last of a noble
+line) sit and brood, living alone with equally gruff, woman-hating
+family retainers. Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer,
+and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests of
+their own ultimate frustration.
+
+But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn't a
+market for ne'er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and
+dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as
+dangerous. No, America must have her special line and no one better than
+Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of
+Wall Street and serve at the right temperature.
+
+He wasn't proud of his writing--or, rather, he wasn't proud of it with
+every one. In his heart of hearts, what he wanted was not the applause
+of the public, but the faith of a coterie, to be a martyr, misunderstood
+by the many, worshipped by the few. A Bloomsbury hero, a Chelsea King!
+"We confess that as a writer Mr. Delancey Woburn is altogether too
+rarefied for our taste. His work is far too impregnated by the stamp of
+a tiny clique of rather self-conscious superintellectuals. Reading his
+books, we feel as if we had suddenly entered a room full of people who
+know one another very well. In other words, we feel out of it."
+
+What would not Delancey have given for a review that began like that!
+Instead of which the best that he could hope for in "shorter notices"
+would be an announcement that "Mr. Woburn's many admirers will no doubt
+find his last book eminently to their taste. He provides a lavish supply
+of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work."
+
+Poor Delancey, his stories _did_ sell so well! And there was his flat in
+Grafton Street with the beautiful new taffetas curtains and the cigars
+that had just arrived from Havana, with his own initials on.
+
+So from week to week he put off becoming an artist and one year (after a
+four-month love affair and two lacquer cabinets) he made a lecture tour
+in America.
+
+"Was it a success?" I asked wearily (Delancey's success is always such a
+terribly foregone conclusion).
+
+"Tremendous," he beamed. "I was careful to be a little dull because then
+they think they're learning something." But he was out of love, the flat
+was overcrowded, money continued to pour in and he knew terribly well
+that he was not making a contribution to contemporary literature.
+
+He had always assured me at intervals that some day he would write his
+"real book" but I think it was after his tour in America that the dream
+became a project. He burst in to tell me about it. Delancey always
+begins things with a sudden noisy rush.
+
+"Charlotte," he said, "I have made up my mind."
+
+"It sounds very momentous," I teased. He decided years ago that I was
+grave, fastidious, whimsical, aloof and (I suspect) a little faded. I
+have long given up fighting my own battle (to be known) because I
+realise that Delancey never revises the passports given to old ideas.
+There is always, to him, something a little bit sacred about the
+accepted. "I can't go on with it any longer," he explained.
+
+"Go on with what?"
+
+"My damned stories."
+
+"How ungrateful you are," I murmured, thinking of the lacquer cabinets,
+"you have a market, you can command a price. Each of your love affairs
+is more magnificently studded with flowers than the last----"
+
+"Be quiet," he said. "I came to you because I knew that you would
+understand."
+
+"You are trying to blackmail me."
+
+"Do be serious," he pleaded. "I am going to give all that up. I have
+determined to settle down and dedicate myself entirely to my book."
+
+"But," I expostulated, "have you thought of the yearning _Saturday
+Evening Post_, of the deserted _Strand_?"
+
+"I have thought of everything," he said, "I shall be sacrificing 5,000
+pounds a year, but what is 5,000 pounds a year?"
+
+I thought of the taffetas curtains and the cigars, but I answered quite
+truthfully.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You see, Charlotte," he dropped the noble for the confidential, "I have
+got things to say, things that are vital to me. I couldn't put them in
+my other work. How could I? It would have seemed--you will think me
+ridiculous--a kind of prostitution."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"But they were clamouring for expression all the time. And I have kept
+them down till I couldn't keep them down any longer. Of course, I know
+my book won't be a success--a popular success, I mean--but it won't have
+been written for the multitude but for the few--the people who really
+care, who really understand. It may be even thought," there was
+exultation in his voice, "dull."
+
+"Well," I said, "I think it is very brave of you--and quite right. Truly
+I do."
+
+"I think I shall take a tiny cottage in a fishing village in
+Devonshire," Delancey was as usual seeing things pictorially--bare
+white-washed walls, blue and white linen curtains and a pot of wall
+flowers.
+
+A week later he came to see me again.
+
+"When are you off to Devonshire?" I asked.
+
+"I have decided to stay here," he answered, "there is a roar of life in
+London, a vibrating pulse, a muffled thunder." I began to be afraid that
+Delancey's book would be very bad indeed. It was, it appeared, to be a
+novel. "Not exactly a novel," he explained, "a large canvas with figures
+moving on a back-ground of world conditions." I thought of "War and
+Peace" and was silent. It doesn't matter being silent with Delancey
+because he doesn't notice it.
+
+"I want," he said, "to picture the very earth in the agonies of labour
+giving birth to a new world." Later, the theme was (to my secret relief)
+narrowed down to England.
+
+"I have changed my motif a little," he said. "I simply want to portray
+the quicksilver of after-war conditions--England in transition." At this
+time Delancey seemed to me the least little tiny bit depressed. The
+income he was sacrificing rose (in his conversation) from 5,000 to 7,000
+pounds. He dined out less, avoided his club and Christie's. Also, he
+kept out of love. For ten years, Delancey had always been in love.
+Managed by him, it was a delightful state, ably presided over by head
+waiters and florists. It made, he once explained to me, all the
+difference to walking into a room.
+
+But everything was changed now. The masterpiece was a jealous god.
+Jealous and, I sometimes thought, apt to be a little tiresome. It had to
+be referred to so very deferentially, with such carefully serious
+respect. Also, it cast a shadow of gravity over Delancey--Delancey who
+was never meant to be a high priest, but rather a young man in white
+flannels, with a cigarette in his mouth, punting a young girl with a red
+sunshade--like an illustration to one of his own stories.
+
+Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely
+admit it) extremely exhausting. But never have my patience and endurance
+been more severely tested than during the year of Delancey's
+masterpiece. He finally decided that in the foreground, there was to be
+the clash of two human souls and in the background, the collision of two
+worlds--the old (pre-War) and the new. In fact, a partie carree of
+conflicts.
+
+"You with your love of form," he explained to me, "will appreciate the
+care I have given to the structure. It is," he added, "difficult to
+mould vast masses of material."
+
+As the months went by I began to be horribly afraid that Delancey's
+novel would be very, very long indeed. And even if nobody read it
+through, not even a reviewer, I should have to without skipping a word
+or a comma.
+
+"The sentences," Delancey told me, "are rather long. I find the
+semicolon very useful for cumulative effects." A vast array of words
+policed by semi-colons. I felt a little dizzy. Would they be able to
+keep order?
+
+"Of course," he continued, "the interest is very largely psychological,
+but I regard the book mainly as a document--a social document. The
+fiction of to-day is the history of to-morrow."
+
+This seemed conclusive. The book could not have less than 700 pages. A
+social document with psychological interest and a double conflict. Why,
+it would be short at that. And then, one day, when Delancey's book had
+become to me a form of eternity, he arrived, breathless with excitement.
+
+"To all intents and purposes, it's finished," he gasped.
+
+"Thank God," I murmured faintly.
+
+"It will be an awful loss to me," he stated mournfully.
+
+"It isn't dead yet," I said with feeble jocularity.
+
+"It is sad to see your children leave you. To watch them step out into a
+cold, inhospitable world," he went on.
+
+"A warm, welcoming world," I amended dishonestly. "You haven't told me
+what it is called yet."
+
+"It isn't called anything. I want you to be its god-mother, Charlotte.
+What about 'Whither'?"
+
+"Too like a pamphlet," I was glad to be on firm ground again.
+
+"I thought about 'Fate's Laboratory,' but it isn't very rhythmical, is
+it?"
+
+"Not very," I agreed.
+
+"The question mark after the 'Whither' would look nice on the cover," he
+reflected regretfully.
+
+I brightened. This was the old Delancey. The Delancey of the _Saturday
+Evening Post_ and the _Strand_, of the taffetas curtains and the cottage
+in Devonshire. By my sudden glow of gladness I realised how much I had
+missed him. But I couldn't say, "Dear, _dear_ Delancey, please be your
+old self and never, never, whatever you do, write another 'good' book,"
+so I confessed that a question mark _would_ look very nice, but that I
+still thought that "Whither" sounded rather like a religious tract.
+
+"Well, we must think it over," he said.
+
+A week later, he announced to me in a tone which indicated clearly that
+my opinion was only wanted if it was approval, "I have decided to call
+my book 'Transition.'"
+
+"I always like single word titles," I said.
+
+"No one will read it," he said. "One bares one's soul to the public and
+they throw stones at it. But at any rate, now I can hold my head high."
+
+I didn't laugh, but it was the effort of a lifetime. Dear Delancey was
+so very absurd as a self-made martyr. It was somehow impossible for him
+to give an impression of having been persecuted for righteousness'
+sake. His shiny, rosy face had never looked rounder, his trousers had
+never been more perfect or his shoes more polished. And there were still
+the same little outbursts of childish prosperity, his watch, his
+tie-pin, his links were all redolent of a vitality that had ever been
+just the least little bit blatant.
+
+"Delancey," I said, "I want you to have just the sort of success you
+want for yourself."
+
+"Thank you," he said, wondering if I knew what I was talking about.
+
+And then, one day, a proof copy of Delancey's book arrived. I looked at
+the paper cover. It was bright orange with "Transition" slanting upwards
+in immense black letters. "Very arresting," I could hear the publisher
+saying. Gingerly I unwrapped it. Underneath, it was sober black linen,
+with bright blue lettering still on the cross. I sat with it in my
+hands, feeling limp and will-less. But, at last, I pulled myself
+together. I read the dedication, "To those who died." I saw that there
+were 600 pages, big pages crowded with words. And then, saying to
+myself, "It is no good putting it off," I began to read. Delancey's book
+was certainly not at all like his stories. It was very nearly rather a
+good book and it was quite extraordinarily dull. The social structure
+played a role of deadly relentless magnitude. It began (before the War)
+as an immense iron scaffolding and ended sprawling in the foreground,
+torn up by the roots. In the clutches of this gigantic monster, the two
+chief characters not unnaturally reduced by comparison with their
+surroundings to the proportion of pygmies in their turn, worked from
+happiness to the self-conscious misery which is the only true state of
+grace.
+
+"I have chosen a man and a woman, neither of them in any way
+exceptional," wrote Delancey in the preface and though this was
+undoubtedly so, they seemed to me truer to fiction than to life. No, the
+merits of the book had nothing to do with the characters, they lay in
+the descriptions of the English countryside, of village life, of London
+traffic, of the Armistice, of an Albert Hall meeting. There was a close
+observation of detail and that pictorial sense which is Delancey's one
+gift and which he relentlessly suppressed whenever he could,
+nevertheless forced its way out here and there. The canvas seemed to me
+immense. Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and
+philistines, "good" women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious
+objectors jostled one another in the melee. Bloomsbury, Westminster,
+Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and
+night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But,
+unlike Delancey's other stories, the soldiers had no V.C.'s and the
+workers didn't touch their caps. My eyes ached and my brain tired as I
+read on, but I forced myself forward with the thought that no one else
+in the world would reach the end.
+
+Then the reviews began. I felt a little nervous but one seemed more
+glowing than the last. Finally, a notice appeared two columns long
+entitled "A Social Document" which ended with the words, "We venture to
+predict that this book will be read 100 years hence as a truer picture
+of the England of to-day than most of the histories that are being
+written." Delancey was frightfully pleased, naturally. With child-like
+joy he showed me cuttings from intellectual literary papers. His book
+was even mentioned in a leading article and formed the topic of a
+sermon.
+
+"Think of reaching a pulpit," he exclaimed exultantly. "Of course, I
+know I've lost my old public but I've found my soul."
+
+"People talk to me of their work now," he told me another time; "in old
+days, they never thought me one of themselves. I was a story teller, not
+an artist."
+
+And then it was that an extraordinary thing happened--"Transition" began
+to sell. It was quoted and talked about until the snowball of fame,
+steadily gathering momentum, started rolling down-hill to the general
+public. The sales went up and up and up. The circulation reached
+100,000 and soon after, 150,000. Why people bought it and whether they
+read it, I don't know, but Sydney (the heroine) and Mark Allison (the
+hero) became household words and soon they were used as generic terms--a
+Sydney, or an Allison, without so much as an inverted comma!
+
+Delancey hardly ever came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided
+state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be
+able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select
+Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to
+sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot
+and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000
+pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was
+making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect
+seemed more firmly closed than ever?
+
+At this time, Delancey avoided me, but I heard that "Transition" was to
+be dramatised and that the film rights had been bought. How the endless
+chaotic mass, loosely held together by semi-colons, was to be moulded
+into a drama or a movie was quite beyond my imagination, but evidently
+some enterprising people had decided to call their play "Transition."
+"Delancey must," I reflected, "be getting very rich indeed." But still
+he didn't come near me, until one day I sent for him. He looked, I
+thought, just a tiny bit care-worn. The all conquering light had gone
+out of his eye. His boots were a little dusty and he wore no tie-pin. He
+had, I suppose, become rich beyond the symptoms of prosperity.
+
+"Well," I smiled at him to reassure him.
+
+"It has all been very surprising, hasn't it?" he said with an
+embarrassed expression.
+
+I didn't know whether to say "yes" or "no," that I was glad or that I
+was sorry.
+
+"But it doesn't alter the quality of your book," I consoled him.
+
+He brightened, "No," he said, "it doesn't; I am glad you said that."
+
+We talked about other things, music and old furniture and people. He
+had, he said, thought of buying a house in Chelsea. It was, I realised,
+not exactly the entry he had planned but I encouraged the idea. There
+was, I explained, nothing like the Thames.
+
+And so we rambled on till he took his leave. But five minutes after his
+departure I heard the bell ring. Delancey burst back into the room,
+
+"I forgot to tell you," he said, "that 185,000 copies of 'Transition'
+have sold."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+A MOTOR
+
+[_To ALICE LONGWORTH_]
+
+
+There is a special quality about a December sunset. The ruffles of red
+gold gradually untightening, the congested mauve islands on a
+transparent sea of green, the ultimate luminous primrose dissolving into
+violet powder and then the cold biting night lit up by strange patches
+of colour that have somehow been forgotten in the sky.
+
+Eve was walking home, her quick, defiant movements challenging the
+evening, her head bent slightly forward, her chin almost touching her
+muff, while her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed and her lithe figure
+seemed almost to be cutting through the icy air.
+
+"This is happiness," she thought exultantly, "this bitter winter
+stimulus--I feel so light--as if my heart and mind were empty--only my
+body is quivering with life--the pure life of physical fitness. Why
+think, or feel, or look forward?" She doubled her pace until her feet
+seemed to be skimming the road. "I feel like a duck and drake," she
+laughed to herself. "Nothing matters, nothing, while there is still
+frost in the world."
+
+And then she saw a little motor waiting on the other side of the road.
+She stopped dead and her heart stopped with her.
+
+"There is no reason why it should be his. Hundreds of people have motors
+like that."
+
+Resolutely she took a step forward. "I can't see from here, and I won't
+go and look," she added as she crossed over.
+
+And then, shutting her eyes:
+
+"Jerry," she said to herself, trying to kill his ghost with his name.
+
+The evening air had become damp and penetrating. It made her throat feel
+sore and she choked a little as she breathed it.
+
+Gingerly she approached the motor to make sure. What an absurd phrase!
+Why, a leap of her heart would have announced its presence, even had her
+eyes been shut.
+
+She knew its every detail, the sound the gears made changing, the feel
+of the seat, the way the hood went up. And, above all, the little clock,
+ticking its warning by day, regular and relentless, while at night its
+bright prying eyes reminded her of all the things she wanted to forget.
+"It is my conscience," she would say, "and fate and mortality. It
+symbolises all the limitations of life. It is the frontier to
+happiness, the defeat of peace."
+
+"Go on," he had said, "and you will end by forgetting it."
+
+It was what he had called her habit of talking things "away."
+
+How often she had slipped into his motor after him, sliding along the
+shiny leather, nestling happily against him, explaining that there was
+no draught, that the rain was not coming in, that her feet were as warm
+as toast. How often he had steered slowly with one hand, while her
+fingers crept into the palm of the other. And then he had turned off the
+engine and they had sat there together silent and alone, cut off from
+the world. How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would caress
+it with her hand, stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him
+looking at her, she would say, "I think my purse must have fallen behind
+the seat." It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an
+adventure, an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of
+existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better
+kingdom than a room; for a room is full of paraphernalia and
+impedimenta, with books and photographs, and the envelopes of letters to
+remind you of people and things that you want to forget. After all she
+could not sweep her house clear of her life, empty it of the necessary
+and the superfluous of her ties and her duties and her responsibilities.
+
+But his motor--his little gasping uncomfortable motor--that was really
+and truly hers, because it was his. Here was her throne and his altar.
+
+No wonder she sometimes stroked it a little, when it was too dark for
+him to ask her what she was doing.
+
+And now, now some one else crept in after him, slid towards him on the
+shiny leather, murmured that her feet were as warm as toast, that there
+was no draught, and of course the rain didn't come in....
+
+Or did she say, "Do you think there is something the matter with your
+motor to-day? It seems a little asthmatic?"
+
+Eve looked at the house. She could see brightness shining behind the
+curtains. She could imagine a glowing fire and a faint smell of warm
+roses. Who was the woman? What were they doing? Sitting on either side
+of the fireplace drowsily intimate, smiling a little perhaps and hardly
+talking, conscious only of the cold outside and the warm room and one
+another....
+
+Eve shivered. Almost unconsciously she fingered the mud guard. "A room
+is a horrible unprivate thing," she said. "People walk in and out of it,
+any one, and there are books and photographs and letters. It is a
+market place, not a sanctuary,--whereas you...." She looked at the
+little motor. It was too dark to see anything, but every line of it was
+branded on her heart.
+
+"No one will ever love you as I did," she said to it and slowly,
+wearily, dragging one foot after another, she walked away into the cold
+raw night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Nothing in the world like winter air to make you feel fit," Bob said to
+himself as he swung himself along the road at a tremendous pace.
+
+"Jove, what a sunset!" he added, looking up at the red gold ruffles
+slowly untightening. He reflected that there is nothing in the world
+like health. Live cleanly and the high thinking will look after
+itself--or at least won't matter. Physical condition, there's nothing
+like it. Love and that sort of thing all very well in its way, but a
+cold bath in the morning and plenty of exercise.... He began to whistle,
+and then--because he did feel most frightfully well--to run.
+
+"Run a mile without being out of breath," he thought complacently, and
+then--because he hadn't meant to--("wasn't even thinking of her," he
+grumbled to Providence)--he found himself outside her door. And in the
+road there was a motor, a little coral coloured motor. He looked at it
+in dismay and then he looked at the house. He saw it was lit up and he
+imagined the room he knew so well. The crimson damask curtains and the
+creamy walls, the glowing fire and the red roses, the roses he had sent
+for her. Probably she would be sitting on that white fur rug on the
+floor, her arms clasped round her knees, her red hair as bright as the
+red hot coals, her dark eyes dreamy and half closed.
+
+"Damn him, I wonder who he is," and he started examining the motor.
+
+"It's not very new," he thought, "the varnish is all off and those shiny
+leather seats are damned cold and slippery, draughty too, I should say;
+hood doesn't close properly. Must let in the rain like a leaking boat."
+
+He put his hand on the mud guard. "Bent," he said. He felt a little
+cheered. But then, looking at the glowing house, he grew disconsolate
+again.
+
+"Wonder what they're doing," he grumbled to himself. "Jabbering away,
+I'll be bound. Never was much of a hand at talking myself. Wonder who
+the deuce he is."
+
+And then he looked contemptuously at the little motor.
+
+"Damned if I couldn't do her better than that," he said. "God, how cold
+it is."
+
+Irresolutely he moved away. Then he began to run, but the raw air
+caught his throat and he felt out of breath.
+
+"Not as young as I was," he thought as he walked away into the damp
+night.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE MASTERPIECE
+
+[_To HAROLD CHILD_]
+
+
+He sat in front of his writing-table with a blank sheet of paper in
+front of him--a creamy, virginal sheet, inviting and elusive. "A few
+black smudges and the whole of life might be there," he thought,
+"concentrated but limited with four corners and no boundaries." He
+thought of the untouched whiteness of the paper violated by a
+masterpiece--or a love letter. He didn't want to think of love letters.
+He had written such hundreds, and for four years now they had all been
+to the same person. His fidelity had been due, he supposed, to the fact
+that to him she was almost more an idea than an individual, a legend
+that he had created. She was his faith, his religion, his shrine. She
+was on a pedestal from which she shed a pale gold light--silvery
+gold--of serenity won through suffering. He saw her very seldom, but
+when he was with her she reminded him of a catch in the voice. It was as
+if her life had reached breaking point and for one moment she would give
+him as divine gift a little poignant stumble before she regained the
+sure foothold of her calm courage. It was these precious moments that
+gave a burning spirit to his image of her. The legend had a soul.
+
+But to-day he didn't want to think of her. He wanted to work. The word
+made him smile a little. There had been a time when ideas had seized
+hold of him and driven him recklessly wherever they wanted him to go.
+Then he had made form his fetish and it had become his prison. Now he
+had lost both his abandon and his rigidity and with each, a certain
+driving force had been taken away from him. He would sit in front of his
+table and remember that all the masterpieces of the world are contained
+in the alphabet and it would prevent him from writing. And then he would
+think of her and that would mean writing to her or writing for her. In a
+sense, everything he wrote was "To her." He remembered the first time
+that he had dared to write her a letter without a beginning. His pen had
+trembled in his hand. And yet it is the way all borderland letters
+begin, whether the frontier is between acquaintanceship and friendship,
+or between friendship and love. For there are moments in life when if
+you can't say "My own Blessed," you can say nothing--omission is the
+substitute for the absolute. Only with her, formality was a flavouring
+of intimacy, a curious fragrance like a faint clinging of unseen
+pot-pourri. And so, for a long time after he had sent her his first
+endless, beginningless out-pouring, her letters had begun, "Dear
+Mr. ----" and had ended very tidily, with a signature at the bottom of a
+page.
+
+He had dedicated his first novel to her,--"To Mrs. ----" The dedication
+had pleased him. It was so immensely full of reserve and respect and the
+possibility of other things. A little, locked box of a dedication. It
+had pleased her, too. "It is a lovely dedication," she had said with
+that smile she had, which was like a peeping glimmer of sunshine on a
+grey day.
+
+He had always gone on dedicating his books to her. His collection of
+poems had been called "To Jane"--which was not her name, but his name
+for her--a deep, clear name, resolute and courageous, calm and direct
+and sure. A still name. He wondered if any one had ever given to another
+human being as much as he had given her. Or perhaps it was no longer a
+question of giving. Everything came from her and belonged to her. She
+was the womb of his thoughts and feelings. She was his roots in life and
+his blossoming. She was the only fixed point in the chaotic muddle of
+things, giving a certain reality to the world simply by being in it.
+
+He hardly ever saw her. He couldn't bring himself to force his way
+through the labyrinthine tangle of circumstances that surrounded her. It
+was as if by doing so, he could only reach her mud-spattered and chipped
+and bedraggled, an unworthy, battered object. And so he preferred her to
+live in his heart, warming and watering his imagination, glowing in
+cold, dark places, gilding the tips of his fancies, fertilising his
+soul. He hardly wanted her outside in the physical world. But when she
+was with him, he felt a deep serenity, an absolute harmony of life.
+Questions and questionings seemed remote and frivolous, the useless
+paraphernalia of empty lives. There came, with her, a fullness, a sense
+of completion.
+
+He sat and thought of her and gradually he shut his eyes and imagined
+her coming into the room. Her movements would be very slow and
+deliberate and a little tired, as if gently, almost imperceptibly, she
+were laying down the burden of her life and allowing herself, just for a
+few moments, the luxurious restfulness of fatigue. Slowly she would pull
+off her long, clinging gloves and he would hold his breath with joy as
+she unsheathed her marvelous arms and hands. And then very tenderly, he
+would lift them to his lips, one by one, laying them down on her lap
+again where he could see them. And they would smile at one another--a
+faint smile hers would be, seen as it were, through the veils of her
+exquisite reticencies. And then because she knew it made him happy, she
+would take off her hat and release the shimmer of her silvery gold hair,
+a halo made of sunshine and moonlight, inextricably interwoven. She
+always gave him a feeling of gold and silver and luminous whiteness, a
+steady radiance that illuminated without blinding. And perhaps she would
+sink her head back into a cushion and shut her eyes with a little
+grateful sigh to these moments of respite, and he would watch her, proud
+beyond measure to be able to give her these little patches of peace. And
+between them there would be a fullness of silence. Sometimes she would
+talk a little with a low, clear, echoless voice like a note without a
+pedal. A still voice--monotonous, people called it--with almost
+imperceptible modulations which seemed gradually deeply significant as
+your ear became attuned to them, like a dim room in which you are able
+to see everything when your eye is accustomed to the light.
+
+It was one of the altogether satisfying things about her, this abundant
+treasure of intimacy which could not be guessed at or even suspected by
+the ordinary passer-by. "That is the woman with the lovely hair? I never
+know what to talk to her about," he had heard people say, and
+exultantly, reverently, he had pressed her image to his heart. She never
+talked much. Seeing her in imagination to-day, he saw her leaning back,
+everything about her drooping and relaxed, her arms, her hands, her
+feet--they had all abdicated--only from the depths of her infinite
+tiredness she was smiling faintly and her smile was the dedication of
+this moment to him. Every now and then she would ask him a question and
+he would answer--rather shortly--or she would make a statement which he
+would seal with a monosyllable. There were never any comments between
+them. In the absoluteness of their understanding, explanations and
+amplifications had become impossible.
+
+And she would get up slowly, giving herself a little shake to wake
+herself up into reality while he gave her her hat, her hat-pins, her
+veil, her gloves, her bag, one by one, and taking her hands, he would
+kiss them first on the backs and then on the palms and then give them
+too back to her.
+
+And she would say, "Thank you," and look slowly all round the room, as
+she always did, wanting to take it away with her without one detail
+missing, for it was to this room that her soul retreated in its moments
+of unbearable loneliness.
+
+With difficulty, she would make her way to the door and rather
+hurriedly, because she knew it was a weakness--she who was so deliberate
+and so strong--she would say, "Write to me," and then she would open and
+shut the door herself because she liked to take away the picture of him
+standing in the middle of his sanctuary--her sanctuary....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He opened his eyes. The room was so full of her that he took a deep
+breath, breathing the certainty of her into his soul. And he seemed to
+hear the words, "Write to me." He smiled very tenderly. He loved her to
+have this one little wish--she was so far above and beyond concrete
+manifestations--she who had such a deep contempt for imprisoning forms.
+And he remembered her once looking at a cheque and saying, "The figures,
+after all, are a limitation." And suddenly in front of him he saw the
+blank sheet of paper. "She shall have the most wonderful love-letter
+ever written by man to woman," he said to himself and at the very bottom
+of the page, he put one initial. Then very tenderly he folded it up and
+addressed it, remembering that it was thus that his first novel had been
+dedicated--"To Mrs. ----." "The difference is," he thought, "that this is
+a masterpiece."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+TEA TIME
+
+[_To SYLVESTER GATES_]
+
+
+She lay on a sofa covered with white marabou, her head sunk deep into a
+billowy morass of lace-coloured satin and lace-coloured lace. She could
+see her pointed toes emerging and her arm dangling over the edge as if
+she had forgotten it. On her finger was a huge emerald ring, a splotch
+of creme de menthe spilt on the whiteness of her hand. She felt
+entrenched and anchored in an altogether strong position, so fixed that
+all advances would have to be made to her. This gave to her voice and to
+her gestures an indolent melodious security.
+
+As the door opened she turned her eyes round slowly, suppressing all
+eagerness.
+
+"Mortimer!" She wondered if disappointment could be as easily controlled
+as joy. "How nice of you to come and see me!"
+
+"Are you glad--really?" He was kissing her hand with an unnecessary
+mixture of shyness and intensity.
+
+"How intolerably literal people in love are," she thought petulantly;
+"always forcing significance into everything."
+
+"Of course," she said, smiling lazily.
+
+"It is good of you to let me come like this." How she hated his
+humility, but--"I like you to," she murmured, automatically kind.
+
+"How lovely you look! Lovelier than ever before--as lovely as ever
+before." And then, "I love you."
+
+"Do you think so?" She seemed amused and sceptical.
+
+"Do you doubt it?" He clutched her wrist.
+
+"Not if you put it like that."
+
+"You are laughing at me," he recognised sadly.
+
+"Forgive me." She put her hand on his, lightly, caressingly, her voice
+gentle and tender.
+
+"But you do know it, don't you?" He was very insistent.
+
+("Does he think that I am blind and deaf and that no one has ever loved
+me before?" she wondered irritably.)
+
+"I think you think so," she prevaricated.
+
+"I know," he was firm. "I shall love you always."
+
+"Nonsense." She was tart with realism. "Why do you fly in the face of
+all experience with meaningless generalisations?"
+
+"I have never said it before."
+
+"Then how can you know?"
+
+He hated her barrister mood.
+
+"Elaine, aren't you glad I love you?"
+
+"Of course." She closed her eyes wearily. They talked of other things
+and she remembered how intelligent he was. It had been--during these
+last months--very easy to forget. But though her interest was
+concentrated, his attention was on other things.
+
+"Elaine," he blurted, "are you going to the country to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"When will you know?"
+
+"I have no idea!"
+
+"But when shall I see you again?"
+
+"I can't tell."
+
+"Elaine, please do put me out of my misery."
+
+"Very well then--I shan't see you again this week."
+
+"Elaine!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Please."
+
+"Please what?"
+
+"I _am_ sorry I bothered you; don't punish me. I promise not to ask any
+more questions, but please let me know when you come back. Even if you
+only ring me up on the telephone I shall have heard your voice!"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You're not angry with me, are you?"
+
+"Why should I be?"
+
+"I thought perhaps you were."
+
+There was a pause. "Is there anything amusing about being loved?" she
+thought; "what patient women the great coquettes of the world must have
+been! How I wish I were a crisp intelligent old maid, with a talent
+perhaps for gardening or books on the Renaissance!"
+
+"How tired you look!" He had taken her hand and was pressing it with
+funny little jerky grasps. "I wish you belonged to me; I wouldn't let
+you spend yourself on every Tom, Dick and Harry."
+
+"It is so difficult to know," she murmured, "who is Tom, who is Dick, or
+who is Harry!"
+
+"When I think of the way your divine sympathy is imposed upon--the way
+your friends take advantage of you!"
+
+"But I like being taken advantage of."
+
+"People's selfishness makes me sick. Look at your white face and your
+drooping eyelids, and your tired little smiles."
+
+"I am sorry."
+
+"Sorry! Good God! My beloved, do take care of yourself, please. Promise
+me not to see any one after I leave; go to bed and pull the blinds."
+
+"But I am expecting Bill."
+
+"Bill will be all the better for not getting what he wants for once."
+
+"But supposing he doesn't want it?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+The door opened.
+
+"Bill!" She put out her left hand, all her features lit up with a quiet
+luminous radiance. His eyes were smiling, but his mouth was grave.
+
+"Elaine!" He said it as if it were a very significant remark, and,
+though he hadn't meant to, he caressed her name with his voice.
+
+"Mortimer thinks I ought to go to bed and send you away."
+
+"But you won't?"
+
+"Probably not." She was bubbling over with gaiety. "I am very
+weak-minded."
+
+The two men were not looking at one another, but currents of hostility
+flowed between them. Bill had not fought for Elaine's love; it had come
+to him with a strange inevitability. He had no fear of losing it and no
+particular desire to keep it, but the thought that you possess something
+that some one else passionately covets is always exhilarating. He would
+never have admitted it--he could never have admitted it, but she was to
+him like an object dangled on a watch chain--not obtrusively displayed
+but a possession recognised by everybody and taken for granted by him.
+Only he never seemed bored because he was never tired of mobilising his
+own charms. And in herself, she delighted him--it was only in her
+relations with him that she got on his nerves. He loved to see her with
+other men exercising the divine arts of her irresistibility, her every
+smile, her every gesture, the intonations of her voice, the turn of her
+head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her
+intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the
+masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a
+coquette--jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull--she tired
+him to death.
+
+"Well, I must be going." Mortimer spoke doubtfully. There was a pause.
+Then Elaine pulled herself together.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have so much to do."
+
+"It was so nice of you to come and see me."
+
+"It was so nice of you to let me come. Please remember your promise to
+let me know when you come back."
+
+"Of course." He was gone.
+
+Wearily she shut her eyes. "Do you remember the time when Mortimer was
+charming?"
+
+"Indeed I do; he was quite delightful till he fell in love with you. He
+is really a warning against loving."
+
+"You hardly heed it, do you?" Her voice was very bitter. How he hated
+the entry of the acidulated tragic into all their talks.
+
+"Perhaps not." He felt guilty, knowing how much he was hurting her.
+"After all you cannot ask me to model myself on the man who bores you
+most in the world."
+
+She smiled. "What a good reason for not loving me!"
+
+"The best!" He was smiling his enchanting, flattering smile at her--the
+smile that always seemed to draw you into the Holy of Holies of his
+confidence.
+
+"I may be going away to-morrow," she said.
+
+"May you?"
+
+"But I shall be back on Thursday. Shall we dine together that night?"
+
+"I am dining with a Russian friend of mine who is passing through
+London."
+
+"Friday, then?"
+
+"Friday I am going to the country for the week-end."
+
+"Then it will have to be Monday."
+
+"Yes, I am afraid so."
+
+"Afraid that you will have to dine with me?"
+
+"How civil you are!"
+
+There was a pause. She wished she could keep all the acid out of her
+voice. He thought how tiresome women were, always wanting to know just
+what you were going to do.
+
+"Bill," she said, holding out her hand, which he took rather
+perfunctorily. He felt like a dog that knows exactly which trick follows
+what word of command, but as, from force of habit, he invariably became
+lover-like when he was absent-minded, he stroked her arm with a
+significant caressing gesture that filled her with joy.
+
+"Are you glad I love you?" she murmured.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"There is an intelligent woman," he thought, "who has had hundreds of
+men in love with her, making a demand for verbal assurances that can't
+possibly add anything to her peace of mind. Either they are true and
+superfluous, or they are false and transparently unconvincing."
+
+"Bill," she said, reading his thoughts, "you can't understand my wanting
+mere words, can you?"
+
+"No," he said, "not you, who know so exactly what they mean."
+
+"Nevertheless, they are sometimes vaguely comforting and reassuring--a
+sort of local anaesthetic." He loved her insight, her curious layers of
+detachment.
+
+"Bill," she murmured, "I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+"Not since two this morning."
+
+"I don't count a ball; besides I was too tired to stop dancing."
+
+"You danced like an angel and your eyes were shining with ecstasy,
+lighting hopes all round, though of course I knew you didn't know your
+partner from the parquet--if he happened to be as good as the floor."
+
+"You love watching me, don't you? much better than seeing me." How he
+wished she weren't always right.
+
+"Remember what a wonderful drama you are, Elaine."
+
+"A drama in which you have played lead. But you only liked the first
+act--the Comedy Act, and you won't even enjoy the curtain as much as you
+think, because always there will be the nasty certainty of its some day
+going up again, and then you won't even be in the wings."
+
+How diabolically clear-sighted she was!
+
+"Bill, dearest," she held out her hand, "you are reaching the moment
+when you long to be the third person. You want a little rest. You have
+come to the point in the life of every lover when he prefers the husband
+to the wife."
+
+But this was more than he could stand. A horrible shadow was being cast
+over his future, romance was shrinking before his eyes. Frightened, he
+bent down and kissed her. "Darling," he murmured, nestling his face in
+her neck, "what nonsense you talk."
+
+Love, passion, romance, fidelity--all were vindicated by this deliberate
+act.
+
+Her doubts, her certainties, subsided, vanished--hypnotised with
+happiness. "I was teasing," she lied.
+
+"I must go," he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not just this moment, please; five more minutes."
+
+"It will be just as difficult then."
+
+"But I shall have had five more minutes."
+
+"How practical you are!"
+
+He stayed.
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+"Do."
+
+"And I shall try and be back in time for tea Thursday, then I shall see
+you, in spite of your stupid Russian."
+
+"If I can get away."
+
+"Can't you bring him to dine with me?"
+
+"I'm afraid not; he has asked some one else."
+
+"Shall I have some forms printed with 'I miss you, bless you,' for you
+to sign and send me each day."
+
+"Goose!"
+
+"Well, at any rate, I shall have you properly on Monday."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And please make a great effort about Thursday."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She drew him down to her, holding his face in her hands.
+
+"It is silly to love at my time of life," she said; "I am too young. It
+is like wearing a lovely new dress to climb mountains in."
+
+"You will always be young," he said; "you are eternal."
+
+It was his considered view; he wished she weren't. Kissing her a little
+absently he walked to the door; then because he had always done so, he
+walked back.
+
+"Bless you," he said. It was perfunctory and final. The shutting of the
+door turned out the light in her eyes.
+
+"How tired I am!" she thought, and then--"Tuesday, Wednesday,
+Thursday--Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE END
+
+
+He knew that nothing could ever possibly happen to him again and so he
+sat on his sofa waiting--for death, he supposed, having excluded every
+other possibility. He didn't want to die, he didn't want to do anything,
+to eat or drink or feel or think--above all, he didn't want to move. He
+had shut his eyes trying to shut out the room. Every bit of it was
+saturated in her, everything had been consecrated--contaminated, it
+seemed to him now--by her touch. There wasn't a patch of carpet or
+chintz that didn't belong to her intimately and exclusively. Every
+object in the room seemed to pose her and add to the interminable
+picture gallery of his memory. He opened his eyes and saw an uncut
+pencil. Here, at any rate, was something new and independent--neutral
+territory, unsharpened it was an unloaded pistol and he wanted to shoot.
+At her? He was bound to miss. His bitterness was no medium through which
+to recapture her magic and without it he would merely be forcing a lay
+figure to perform vulgar and meaningless antics. And if he tore her to
+bits, it would be an indictment of himself, not of his gentlemanliness,
+that had long ceased to mean anything to him--but of his taste. Wearily,
+he shut his eyes. It was no good thinking when your mind had become a
+circle--a very small circle. He remembered something she had once said,
+"The future looks like the present, stretching interminably ahead in the
+shadow of the past." She had always understood everything, so she didn't
+deserve to be forgiven anything.
+
+The front door bell rang and at once, he felt sick and faint. A ring
+still excited him as much as it had done in the days when it might have
+been hers. It was a ridiculous state of nerves that he had never been
+able to get out of.
+
+A moment later she was in the room.
+
+An absolute limpness had come over him. If his life had depended on it,
+he couldn't have lifted his hand. The surface of his mind examined every
+detail of her--the intense whiteness of her face and the severe
+blackness of her clothes, the fact that she wore no jewel of any sort,
+not even a ring--except, of course, her wedding-ring. He had never seen
+it before and it seemed a gaudy splash of colour out of harmony with the
+rest of her.
+
+She took off her hat and laid it on the table. Then she walked to the
+window, touching the things she passed with a little caressing gesture.
+He noticed that she picked up the unpointed pencil and he felt a little
+desolate feeling, as if he had lost his only friend.
+
+Suddenly, she turned round, "I am leaving England to-morrow," she said.
+
+He shivered at her velvety voice, as he would have shivered had his hand
+touched suede. "Well," his voice was too natural to be natural, "you
+don't want to say good-bye to me again, do you?"
+
+"Is there such a thing as 'good-bye,'" she mused; "won't this room
+always be a part of my life? Can one end anything? A chapter, a
+paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on
+living in spite of subsequent events?"
+
+Relentlessly he brought her down from her generalisations.
+
+"You have ended my life," he said.
+
+"Oh, no." She was sitting beside him on the sofa. Gently and tentatively
+she put her hand on his. "Take it away," he said roughly, miserably,
+conscious that he was behaving like a hero of melodrama, and then more
+quietly, "can't you spare me anything?"
+
+"I never could spare any one anything, could I? Not _even_ myself?"
+
+He resisted the wistful pleading of her eyes, taking a savage pleasure
+in their tired look. No doubt the preparations for her journey had
+exhausted her. Her hand was lying limply on the arm of the sofa.
+
+"What does it feel like to wear a wedding-ring?" he asked harshly.
+
+"It feels so strange at first. One keeps catching sight of it and being
+made to feel different by it. Somehow, it really matters, it really
+seems to mean something."
+
+"Indeed?" He was ashamed of the cheap cynicism of his tone. It wasn't
+what he had meant to say.
+
+She waited a few minutes and then she got up and put on her hat, deftly
+arranging her veil with almost mechanical quickness and skill. Then she
+pulled on her gloves. How well he knew the swift deliberateness of her
+movements. Without turning round she left the room. He heard her go into
+the dining-room.... A few minutes later, he heard her come out again. He
+heard her open and shut the front door.... He went to the open window.
+Would she look up? Surely that was the test of whether or not she was
+still the same--the eternal. In the past, whatever had happened between
+them, she had never been able to resist that final peep, half to see
+whether he was there, half to send up a little tiny semi-binding glance
+of reconciliation. Sometimes, when he had been very angry with her he
+had watched from behind the curtains. To-day, he was at the open window,
+waiting to send her the smile which was to obliterate the past
+half-hour, the past six months. It was not to be so much a smile as a
+look, a benediction.
+
+She got into her taxi. Through the far window she told the driver where
+to go. She never glanced behind her, she never glanced up.
+
+He shut the window with a shiver. "The end," he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MISUNDERSTOOD
+
+[_To JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES_]
+
+
+Her greatness was an accepted fact. Her fame had not been a dashing
+offensive but an inevitable advance quietly over-running the world.
+People who never read knew her name as well as Napoleon's. There was,
+somehow, something a little irreverent about being her contemporary. To
+attend the birth of so many masterpieces gave you the feeling of a
+legendary past invading the present.
+
+A few great critics wrote wonderfully about her, but a vast majority of
+them, trained only in witty disparagement and acute disintegrating
+perception, became empty and formal in face of an unaccustomed challenge
+to admiration and reverence.
+
+It is only the generous who give to the rich, the big who praise the
+big; the niggardly salve their consciences in doles to the humbly poor,
+making life into a pilgrimage of greedy patrons in search of grateful
+victims.
+
+June was radiantly removed from the possible inroads of charity. You
+couldn't even pretend to have discovered her--unless, of course, you
+had met her--then you were quite sure that you had. Her friends
+explained--as friends always do--that it was what she was, not what she
+did, that mattered, that her letters and her conversation were far more
+wonderful than her books, that she was her own greatest masterpiece.
+
+It was irritating to be forced out of it like that, but when you had
+seen her you began doing the same thing.
+
+It was impossible not to want to tell people that her hair was like a
+crisp heap of rusty October beech leaves, that she always had time for
+you. And then you began to explain that she was happily married, which
+led you to the fact that she was happy, which reminded you that you were
+happy, by which time no one was listening to you. But it didn't seem to
+matter. People would ask such silly questions about her. "Does she
+admire Dostoievski?" they would say, and you would answer, "She has the
+most enchanting brown squirrel----"
+
+George wasn't thinking any of those things. His mind didn't work like
+that. He was eating a huge breakfast, with the "Times" propped up
+against his coffee pot. The two and a half columns about her new book
+annoyed him. He hated a woman to get herself talked about--June, too, of
+all people. There was nothing new-fangled about June. Why, his mother
+loved her and she was so pretty and so fond of clothes and babies. There
+was really no excuse for her sprawling over his paper when she ought to
+have been moving discreetly through the social column like his other
+female friends.
+
+There was really no reason for a happy, cared-for woman to write. It
+wasn't even as if she had to earn her own living. Richard ought to put
+his foot down, but Richard didn't seem to mind. One might almost have
+thought that he was proud of his wife's reputation, if one hadn't known
+him to be such a manly man. After all, a woman's place was in her
+home--or the Court Circular. She should never stray from birth, deaths
+and marriages to other parts of the paper. Even the sporting news
+(though he liked a woman to play a good game of golf or a good game of
+tennis) was _hardly_ the place for a lady.
+
+George knew that he was working himself up and he hated doing that at
+breakfast. So he started undoing the elaborate knot of a brown paper
+parcel to soothe his nerves--George never cut string. And out of it
+emerged her book--her new book. It was beautifully bound (she knew that
+he liked a book to look nice) and on the fly leaf was the inscription:
+"A leather cover, a little paper and my love."
+
+It was as if she had sent him a box or a paper weight or a clock. It
+wasn't the gift, it was the thought that mattered. She knew that he had
+never read any of her books, but they were as good a vehicle for her
+affection as another.
+
+"You are the only person," she had said to him, "to whom my books are
+really tokens," and she had smiled very radiantly as if he were the only
+person who had discovered the real secret of her books. George reflected
+sadly that he was the only person who understood her. Why, it was
+maddening to think that any one reading those paragraphs in the "Times"
+might imagine her middle-aged and ugly and spectacled. And how were they
+to know that her knowledge of cricket averages was probably greater than
+that of the Selection Committee? Probably, too, they pictured her with
+short hair, June, with her crinkling crown of autumn beach leaves; and
+thick ankles, June with her Shepperson legs; and blunt inky fingers,
+June with her rosy pointing nails and her hands like uncurling fans.
+
+His mind went to other things, her low hard volleys and the lithe, easy
+grace with which she leapt over the lawn-tennis net. In thinking of her,
+the irritation her writing caused him decreased. It seemed altogether
+too irrelevant. June was the sort of woman one did things for. Helpless,
+he reflected with satisfaction, thinking of her tininess. Why, he could
+lift her up with one hand. George always mixed up physical phenomena
+with psychological fact. Small women were in need of protection; pale
+women were delicate; clever women were masculine--the greatest of all
+crimes. June might think it funny to be clever, but no one could deny
+that she was feminine--the sort of woman who appealed to you to do
+little tiny things for her (things you would have done in any case), as
+if they were very important and very dramatic and very difficult. George
+liked the sort of woman who said to him: "Mr. Carruthers, you who know
+everything----" It was apt, of course, to lead you into a lot of
+trouble, but that was one of the necessary results of being a man and
+having a superior intellect. June wasn't like that. She never asked you
+for legal advice or financial tips. She simply thought it most angelic
+of you to have fetched her coat and so clever of you to have noticed
+that it was getting chilly. And when you sent her flowers on her
+birthday, she would explain to you the flow of delight she had felt and
+perhaps a tiny little moment of surprise until she realised that of
+course it wasn't surprising at all, but just exactly what she knew at
+the bottom of her heart you would do--you, who were such a wonderful
+friend. Only the flowers were far more beautiful than she could have
+imagined and how had you been able to find them?
+
+George had a photograph of June on his writing table. People were apt to
+stop short at it and say: "Is that the _great_ June Rivers, the writer?"
+And he would brush the question aside--one must be loyal--and say: "She
+is a friend of mine," rather stiffly, as if they had said that she had
+run away from her husband or been found drunk.
+
+He looked at it this morning, and suddenly he felt that he must see
+her--a feeling she frequently inspired. He knew that she hated the
+telephone, so he sent her a little note.
+
+"Dear June: Thank you for your beautifully-bound book. May I come round
+this afternoon? I long to see your hair."
+
+He wondered why he had put that: it was a silly sort of thing to say; so
+he scratched out the "hair" very carefully so that you could see
+nothing, and substituted "you." Then he wrote "George" and, after a
+moment's hesitation, added the postscript:
+
+"Of course you saw that Macaulay had taken four wickets for two runs?"
+
+Half an hour later her answer reached him.
+
+"George dear, please come this afternoon. I was so hoping you would.
+Come whatever time suits you. I shall be happy and patient and impatient
+waiting for you." ("That doesn't mean anything," he growled to himself.
+"Pity she can't write more clearly.") "Of course I saw about Macaulay.
+June."
+
+At five he was on her doorstep, and a very few moments later he was
+holding both her hands. They seemed somehow to have got lost in his.
+Her hair was crisper and rustier than ever, swirling about in
+competitive overlapping ripples. Her eyes, like a shallow Scotch brook,
+were laughing at him: like transparent toffee they were or burnt sugar
+or amber. "June," he said, and his voice was funny and thick, "I had
+forgotten how pretty you were."
+
+"That was just a little plot you were making with yourself to please
+me," she said.
+
+They sat happily on a sofa and talked about the wonderful way Mr. Fender
+managed the Surrey bowling; they discussed the iniquities of the
+Selection Committee; they decided that no woman who played the base line
+game could ever be quite first class. They considered the relative
+merits of Cromer and Brighton from the point of view of George's mother;
+they agreed that being braced was one thing and being overbraced
+another. Then June told George that he ought to marry, and George said
+that he was not a marrying man, and June said that men became the worst
+old maids and that a man's place was in the home and George thought that
+she had got it wrong by accident.
+
+June was perfectly happy. She loved talking to George--George who adored
+her without knowing that she had genius, only that she had sympathy--had
+no idea that she was a great woman, only that she was a charming one.
+He was looking at her with a worried expression.
+
+"June," he said, "you look tired."
+
+"Oh, but I'm not a bit."
+
+He put her feet up and covered them with a shawl.
+
+"I wish you would stop writing," he said. "What good do books do? Health
+is the only thing that matters."
+
+"Loving is the only thing that matters," she murmured, "loving and being
+loved."
+
+"Well," (George thought it so like a woman to go off at a tangent like
+that), "you've got Richard."
+
+"Richard," she twinkled, "is not like you. He loves my books."
+
+"He ought to know better," George asserted severely, and at that moment
+in he came.
+
+"George!" Richard was jubilant. "Have you heard the news?"
+
+"What news?" George was thinking of the Carpentier-Lewis fight due that
+night.
+
+"June has been awarded the Nobel prize."
+
+"How splendid!" George looked a little puzzled. "Is it for life saving?"
+
+"Yes," June put in quickly.
+
+"I'm not at all surprised." George beamed at her. "You always were as
+plucky as they made 'em and gifted. Do you remember how charmingly you
+used to sing? 'Not a big voice, but so true,' Mother used to say, and
+she's a great judge."
+
+"Your mother has always been so sweet to me."
+
+"What a talented woman like you wants to write for beats me."
+
+George had got back to his grievance again, but she lured him on to the
+subject of irises on which they were both experts, and it was not till
+just before dinner that he hurried away.
+
+Then suddenly he remembered that he hadn't asked her whose life she had
+saved. How silly and how selfish! It was so like her not to talk about
+herself, and then he saw on a patch of posters: "June Rivers awarded the
+Nobel prize," and though he was very late he stopped to buy an evening
+paper.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+COUNTERPOINT
+
+[_To THE MARCHESE GIOVANNI VISCONTI VENOSTA_]
+
+
+Matthew half shut his eyes--as he always did when he particularly wanted
+to see.
+
+"For the first time in my life," he said, "I regret my myopia.
+Confronted with this room, imagination pales before sight."
+
+Virginia looked round--at the strawberry ice brocade, at the gilt, at
+the Bouchers--so painstaking and so painful--at the palms that seemed to
+conceal manicurists and barbers.
+
+"Look," he continued, "at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose
+take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair and dye."
+
+"Oh,"--Virginia's smile was playing like a light over his face--"think
+of the days when her eyes were like stars and her ears like shells and
+her hair was curling all over the place."
+
+"Virginia," his voice was tender, "where you are there are no more
+palms, wigs turn into hair, rouge into blushes----"
+
+"Matthew," she said, "you are a romantic and I am the only person in the
+world who knows it."
+
+"You are the only person in the world with whom I am in love."
+
+"For the moment."
+
+"How practical you are!" he teased, "full of forethought and arriere
+pensees. Isn't the moment the capture of the divine?"
+
+She sighed a little--wise with the wisdom of frustrated dreams, and she
+thought how happy he was--happy with the happiness of iridescent,
+ever-changing whimsies.
+
+"Virginia, does that young man love you?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"The one in spectacles."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"One can never be sure."
+
+"Of course if he doesn't, it proves that I am right in saying that
+spectacles are fatal. They prevent people from using either their eyes
+or their imagination. Shall I go up to him and ask him?"
+
+"He would answer: 'I don't understand.'"
+
+"And I would explain: 'Virginia is the only lady in orange,' and he
+would look at you for a moment or two and, holding out his hand in an
+ecstasy of gratitude, he would say: 'Thank you. Yes, I love her.'"
+
+"Matthew," she murmured, "what an unsuitable name."
+
+They sat in silence, interfered with only by the necessity of
+convincing passers-by that they did not want to be interrupted.
+
+"Matthew," she said, "do you see that tall fair man?"
+
+"The blond beast?"
+
+"With a very tall woman."
+
+"With gold hair and eyes like cows in pictures of Christ in a manger?"
+
+"Yes. He loves her."
+
+"How suitable."
+
+"But it isn't. He has a red-haired wife."
+
+"How unsuitable."
+
+"Matthew, do be serious. I like him."
+
+"How complicated."
+
+"I told him I hated his air of perfunctory but restrained passion, and
+he laughed."
+
+"Any one would have."
+
+"And we made friends."
+
+"You always make friends with everybody."
+
+"You are unsympathetic."
+
+"I am, I confess, a little bewildered by the situation. Do I understand
+that you are suffering from an unrequited passion for a man who is
+illegitimately attached to a magnificent cow and legitimately bound to a
+bewitching squirrel?"
+
+"Matthew, you really are provoking. What I mean is that he is making a
+fool of himself."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he might do something irrevocable."
+
+"Lucky man."
+
+She looked at him in desperation--a desperation half exasperation and
+half enchantment. If only Matthew would sometimes appear serious--there
+is something so restful about appearances. Instead of which he always
+remained superlatively unsatisfactory and superlatively irresistible.
+
+"Virginia," he said, "let us leave all this and drive round the park and
+I will talk to you like a lover in a bad book and I will mean every word
+I say."
+
+"We can't go yet," she murmured.
+
+"Virginia,"--his voice was urgent--"I will be divinely pompous."
+
+That was so like him. He always tried to safeguard the simplest, most
+sincere moments of his life by inverted commas. It was a little trick
+that always irritated her.
+
+"What an artist you are," she remarked acidly.
+
+"Yes, indeed," he assented, smiling her out of her irritation. And then:
+"I have known you, Virginia, ever since I can remember."
+
+"You told me that the first time we met."
+
+"It is still true."
+
+"How magnificent."
+
+It was her turn now to ward off what she was longing for. To be serious
+with Matthew was a form of disarmament you always regretted.
+
+"And knowing you as I do, I recognise the crusading light in your eye
+and I must point out to you that your altruistic excursions have not
+always ended by tidying up the situation."
+
+"Alas, no."
+
+"Now, why plunge into the eternal triangle? There is really no role for
+you unless you propose to supplant the cow. What, by the way, is her
+name?"
+
+"Grace."
+
+"I don't like the statuesque," he said, wrinkling up his eyes. "Look at
+her ecstatic vacant expression. A dangerous combination."
+
+Virginia wished she had not given him this theme. He would weave it into
+such marvellous patterns that she would never be able to get it out
+intact again.
+
+"I must have some more facts," he said. "What is the squirrel called?"
+
+"Estelle."
+
+"And the hero?"
+
+"Edgar."
+
+"More and more suitable. What prophetic parents! How admirably they kept
+their heads at the font. The squirrel is very vivacious--is it a brave
+front, a blind eye or a shallow heart?"
+
+"Estelle is a courageous woman and discreet with the unpierceable
+reticence of spontaneity."
+
+"How delightful. I might try Estelle myself."
+
+"You might."
+
+"If I said 'I love you,' would she laugh or cry?"
+
+"Laugh, I think."
+
+"With a little hidden tear in her voice?"
+
+"I have my doubts about the hidden tear."
+
+"Then she would be no good to me. I like mixed effects."
+
+At this moment Grace and Edgar danced by. They were both radiantly fair
+and a little colossal in scale. Her eyes were half shut and her mouth
+was half open.
+
+"Matthew," Virginia was firm, "something must be done. How can he scale
+the heights of a great passion carrying that hold-all?"
+
+"An empty hold-all isn't so very heavy."
+
+"It is if you can't put it down."
+
+"Virginia," he said, "your missionary zeal appals me. Why invade the
+situation? What are you going to tell the man? That he has children?"
+
+"No. That he is throwing his life into a cul-de-sac."
+
+"He won't believe you."
+
+"No."
+
+"And it will probably end by his falling in love with you and think
+what a terrible mess the cow and the squirrel will make."
+
+Edgar came up to them.
+
+"Will you give me the pleasure of a dance?"
+
+"I should love to."
+
+Virginia's apricot had become a strand in the pattern of the ball-room.
+
+A parma violet lady settled on Matthew like a fly.
+
+"I can't think how you have anything left to say to Virginia," she
+remarked disagreeably. "But I suppose you simply make love to her."
+
+"It is not simple at all."
+
+"Let us go and sit somewhere," Edgar was saying, and they went into
+another room.
+
+All of our real indiscretions in life come in the form of
+generalisations. A name is a warning, and we really give ourselves away
+in abstract philosophisings applied by an intelligent companion to the
+particular.
+
+"Why should we accept ready-made standards?" Edgar said. "None of the
+great governing forces of life can fit into a ditch of conventions."
+
+"No."
+
+"Sometimes you have to set out to sea and turn your back on the old
+familiar coastline."
+
+"In a pleasure boat for an excursion."
+
+"In a sailing ship for distant seas."
+
+"Argosies have a way of turning into penny steamers."
+
+"You ought not to say that--you of all people, who sail the seas in a
+tub with a sunshade."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I am at the mercy of the winds. But you have a harbour
+and an anchor and a flag to fly."
+
+"You are thinking that I'm a fool."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One must sometimes cut one's losses."
+
+"One must sometimes cut one's gains--a much more difficult thing."
+
+"You can't throw away light."
+
+"The world is brighter with your back to the sun."
+
+"Virginia," he said, "I have made up my mind."
+
+"What can I say? I am helpless. I see you going shipwreck on dummy
+rocks--the water let in by a penknife."
+
+"You are cruel."
+
+"Don't you think I know those frontiers, when paradise seems but a step
+away, but you know that it is a step you can't retrace?"
+
+"Why should you want to go backwards?"
+
+She looked past him into space.
+
+"Behind us," she murmured, "lie so many things--memories of childhood,
+dim happy echoes, primroses and hoops and peace shot with laughter. When
+you have taken your step you daren't look back. Remembering hurts too
+much. And so you look forward--always forward, knowing that the promised
+land is behind you."
+
+Grace was dancing round and round, wondering how one stopped. Away from
+him she felt restless and nervous and will-less and incomplete, like a
+frustrated animal lost and impotent, with smouldering rage in her heart
+and sulky fires in her eyes. Why didn't he come to release her, to calm
+the tearing fever of her blood?
+
+Again and again she walked through the library and always he was on the
+sofa with Virginia--Virginia in her orange haze melting into cushions;
+and sometimes he was bending right forward, his whole body curved into
+urgency. And when she passed, he half looked up with the tail end of a
+smile falling as it were accidentally in her direction.
+
+Estelle laughed and talked, her feet twinkled, her eyes danced.
+Marriage, she said, was an altogether delightful thing, quite different
+from what people thought----
+
+Matthew was introduced to her. He explained that love was so important
+that it could only be discussed lightly. He said that her hair reminded
+him ... he wished he could think of what, but he had such a bad memory
+for metaphors. It took him all his time to remember that a harp was like
+water and Carpentier like a Greek god. It was funny, wasn't it, to have
+such a weak head. He thought it came from hay fever--he always had hay
+fever during the third week of May. It came entirely from honeysuckle.
+
+Estelle said that she would like to sit in the library. Grace was in a
+corner pulling monosyllables out of her mouth like teeth.
+
+Virginia was still in the middle of the sofa, a dissolving mass of
+orange mist. Edgar was talking away all risk of his suiting the action
+to the word. Estelle was dimpling.
+
+"Do you remember," she said to Matthew, "that orange is flame-colour?"
+
+"By Jove, yes," he said, "oriflammes and hell fire."
+
+A low murmur came from the sofa.
+
+"Will you introduce me to your husband?" Matthew asked.
+
+They all talked together.
+
+"By the way, Virginia," Matthew said, "the young man does love you."
+
+"Dear me, how very nice."
+
+"It only required me to point it out to him."
+
+"Was he pleased?"
+
+"Delighted. By the way, Mr. Wilmot,"--Matthew turned to Edgar--"do you
+ever wear spectacles?"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+VILLEGIATURA
+
+[_To MARCEL PROUST_]
+
+
+What a fool he had been to come. These wooden walls creaking at a touch,
+and the floors responding like an animal in pain to the lightest
+footstep. Not that Marie Aimee had light footsteps--far from it. She
+clattered about with the happy noisiness of a good conscience and
+perfect health. In her hands the opening of a door became an air-raid
+and yet what could you do, confronted with her rosy face beaming with a
+child-like confidence in giving pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+No, it was entirely his own fault. Everything was what he might have
+expected. The sea was just where he had been told it would be, the air
+was relentlessly bracing, the cleanliness of the Hotel Bungalow reminded
+you of a shiny soaped face which had never known powder. It was all, he
+reflected, quite horrible. The salt-laden wind blowing the sand up from
+the dunes, the hard bright sunshine, the effect everything gave you of
+having been painted with the six colours of a child's rather cheap
+paint-box.
+
+"A different man," she had said he would feel. Well he felt it
+already--the lassitude of his body feebly revolting against the
+impending bracing, his eyes watering at the glare. Health and
+inspiration, Marthe had said, dreamless sleep, an insatiable appetite
+and perfect peace in which to finish his novel. "Think how quiet it will
+be," she had said. As if the country were ever quiet, crowded as it was
+with locos and dogs and sabots. Surely peace meant Paris in August, with
+every one away, thick carpets and a noiseless valet.
+
+Maurice imagined himself merging into a huge armchair, just able to see
+a square glass vase of Juliette roses--gilt petals lined with deep pink
+velvet. Why on earth were there never any flowers in the country? And no
+one would disturb him--no one. Privacy is only possible in a big town.
+Every detail of life in the Hotel Bungalow was revealed to him in a
+series of sights, sounds and smells. And should a fellow lunatic arrive,
+how was he to avoid him? At every meal there would be little exchanges
+of the banal, after dinner a game of billiards--even possibly, horror of
+horrors, potential excursions planned with zest and good fellowship. And
+all the time he would be saying "No," more and more ungraciously, or,
+worse still--and far more likely--saying "yes."
+
+And then where would his novel be? Not that it was possible any way to
+write in a place where the sun was always in your eyes, the wind blew
+your paper away and creaking boards made sitting in your bedroom out of
+the question.
+
+Marthe was a fool, given up entirely to hygiene and plans for other
+people. "You will come back bubbling over with physical fitness, your
+dear face all tanned," she had said. "Dear" indeed! It was simply a
+bribe. He was being bribed for his own good. And to think that like a
+great gaby he had been shoved off to the sea by one term of endearment,
+and to a place, too, where there was neither shade nor shadows, simply
+miles and miles of bright monotonous sea, three dusty cornflowers, two
+bedraggled poppies and the sun all around you.
+
+Tanned, indeed! Why his face would be all blisters and his eyes
+bloodshot.
+
+The insensitiveness of women!
+
+If Marthe were here she would bathe before breakfast, feed the hens,
+find the eggs, encourage the cook, pat the dog, listen to the story of
+Marie Aimee's life, pick the cornflowers, praise the cook, churn the
+butter, play with the children, climb on to the hay cart, collect shells
+on the beach, lie in the sun, let the sand trickle through her fingers
+and explain with perfect sincerity that it was the most delightful place
+in the world.
+
+But he didn't like paddling or shrimping or sailing or farmyard life.
+He wanted a velvet lawn, a cedar, a rose garden, lavender, a sun dial,
+iced lemonade and solitude. Or he wanted his own cool apartment, with
+drawn sunblinds, vases full of flowers, his immense writing table, and a
+deserted Paris around him.
+
+Women always did to you as they wanted to be done by. That sort of
+literal interpretation of Christianity showed such a lack of
+imagination. It was no good telling Marthe that you didn't like the sea,
+she simply wouldn't believe it.
+
+"Think of the sunset reflected in the wet sand," she would say, and if
+you told her that you didn't want to think about it, that it was no fit
+subject for an active mind, she would be hurt.
+
+In any case no one had a right to make you do things for your own good.
+It was a horrible form of self-sacrifice. If Marthe had said, "_Please_
+go to St. Jean-les-Flots and pick me a poppy," he would have been
+delighted, but to stay at the Hotel Bungalow in the interests of his own
+health was a very different matter.
+
+Marie Aimee was putting a pot with one red geranium in it on his writing
+table. It was, she explained, still very early in the season but
+Monsieur must not be discouraged. Later it became very gay with dancing
+and Japanese lanterns in the garden. The Hotel Bungalow would be quite
+full, whereas now there was only Monsieur and a lady.
+
+"A lady?"
+
+"But yes, Monsieur."
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"A lady of a certain age."
+
+Maurice hoped that it would be an uncertain age. Of course every one
+over twenty would seem old to Marie Aimee. Probably the lady was on that
+exquisite frontier line, the early thirties, when the bud is already
+unfurling its petals, angles have softened into curves, and the
+significant is stirring in everything like a quickening child. Thirty,
+the age of delicate response, of subtle tasting, divorced equally from
+the ignorant impetuosity of youth and the desperate clutchings of middle
+age. How he disliked young girls with their sunburn, their manly
+strides, their meaningless giggles, their eternal nicknames! And, over
+their heads, a warning and a trade mark, that sword of
+Damocles--marriage.
+
+Maurice was feeling a little happier. As he walked into lunch he felt a
+real twinge of curiosity. Ridiculous it was--why he was getting quite
+romantic, imagining an exquisite creature on a holiday from her husband.
+That was no doubt the result of the Hotel Bungalow. On the velvet lawn
+with the cedar, the rose garden, the sun dial and the iced lemonade, he
+would have been enjoying to the full his usual ironic detachment, but
+St. Jean-les-Flots would throw any one to romance.
+
+He walked into the dining room. At the far end with her back to him sat
+the lady. She wore a white coat embroidered with black, a white skirt, a
+white hat with a white lace veil. On the chair beside her lay a Holland
+sunshade lined with green. It was he thought, deplorable, and indicated
+yellow spectacles. Her feet were very small and gave you the impression
+of an insecure foundation to her body. Her back was broad. She was
+certainly over forty. Forty, thought Maurice, the dangerous age--the
+desperate age. From forty to fifty, the flower in full bloom, the period
+of engulfing passions, of urgent transitory satisfactions. For how many
+women must it not be a ten years' death struggle.
+
+"What a place," Maurice was disgusted; "it is driving me to melodrama."
+
+The lady got up with a certain waddling stateliness (perhaps after all
+she was fifty). Her clothes fell into perfection--she walked slowly and
+calmly with appraising steps. The lace veil was over her face. She did
+not forget her sunshade, her bag, or her handkerchief. Louis, the
+waiter, opened the door for her. She sailed out like a gondola on the
+stage, or Lohengrin's swan. Her movements gave an effect of invisible
+wheels.
+
+During the afternoon she remained undetectable, which was a tour de
+force at St. Jean-les-Flots, where the landscape was a successful
+conspiracy against concealment, and a sunshade could be seen for miles.
+Maurice had a tiresome feeling that she was lying out somewhere with
+that horrible sunshade over her head and a novel by Gyp on her lap. Had
+she, he wondered, ever read any of his books? Perhaps when she found out
+his name she would come up to him and say: "Are you _the_ Mr. Maurice
+Van Trean?" And when he had bowed in the affirmative, she would add that
+she liked "Sur les Rives" best of his books--"she had read them all many
+times--and especially that marvellous description of Camille's return to
+her husband."
+
+Maurice walked for miles down the hard glaring white road. It was the
+most uncomfortable thing he could think of doing, and when you are
+determined to enjoy nothing there is a certain voluptuous satisfaction
+in a maximum of unpleasantness. The air was burning and solid. An
+occasional convolvulus drowned in dust straggled in weary clinging grace
+by the roadside--a pathetic symbol, he reflected, of the pale refined
+irrelevant women who fade ineffectually beside the highways of life. He
+thought of Marthe with her urgent pulsating rhythm, the rhythm he
+remembered bitterly, that had brought him here. He wished vindictively
+that she were beside him, the hard burning surface of the road biting
+through the soles of her shoes. He would walk on and on till there were
+blisters on her feet and her steps were lagging. His teeth were set in
+the grim satisfaction of revenge.
+
+"This is the country," he would say. "Do you feel the health-giving sea
+breeze you told me about?"
+
+He stopped suddenly. Walking towards him was the lady. The offensive
+sunshade was over her head, but her veil was up. She was, he supposed,
+forty-six--no, forty-four. Her eyes were wide apart, dark and indolent
+and long--brown or blue they might have been. Her face was wide and so
+was her mouth with lips like curtains drawn across the teeth. Her
+cheek-bones were high and her skin, like marshmallow, was marbled with
+the bright yellow lights and bright blue shadows of early afternoon.
+There was a curious grace about her broad solid figure, an unhurried
+indifferent grace, as if she said to herself, "I shall please at my own
+time." She was not pretty. Her clothes belonged to her as essentially as
+her limbs.
+
+Maurice took off his hat.
+
+"Forgive me, Madame, but I think that we are both living at the Hotel
+Bungalow."
+
+"I think so, too," she said drily.
+
+He thought that she thought that he was taking a liberty, which made him
+suppose that she was not quite a lady, which made him accuse himself of
+vulgarity.
+
+And then she laughed, and his accusations, both of her and of himself,
+fled.
+
+They walked back together and he explained to her just how much he hated
+the sea, the heat, the Hotel Bungalow, the cook, and Marie Aimee's
+footsteps. He explained how anxious he had been about her--how he had
+longed to see her face--how much her sunshade had depressed him--how her
+lace veil had been a personal enemy.
+
+She said that she adored the country....
+
+He told her that only in big towns could you find peace or flowers.
+
+She said the Hotel Bungalow had "un caractere assez special...."
+
+He did not listen to her comments--they were mere breathing places. On
+the subject of the sea he was, he thought, almost witty, with a touch of
+real indignation.
+
+She said the sea was her passion....
+
+He decided that she was an obstinate woman--entetee. How ridiculous to
+love the sea--especially for some one who pretended to like the country.
+The two were practically incompatible. Could she explain her point of
+view?
+
+The sea, she said, was such a wonderful escape....
+
+He was thrilled. A thousand explanations of her presence at the Hotel
+Bungalow jostled one another in his mind.
+
+Of course he quite understood what she meant about the sea. It had a
+certain spaciousness and it did, so to speak, quarantine you from life.
+For instance, in a rowing boat, it was impossible to feel the importance
+of being a snob.
+
+That was not, she said, exactly what she meant....
+
+Maurice was annoyed. He was accustomed to people who were proud to share
+his meanings.
+
+Madame would perhaps be able to explain....
+
+It was not, Madame murmured, a question of being able to explain, but of
+being able to interrupt....
+
+Maurice flushed and relapsed into sulky silence. He watched his
+companion trotting by his side, taking three little steps to each one of
+his. He took a childish pleasure in making his strides as wide as
+possible, upsetting the rhythm of her walk. The brim of her hat hid her
+eyes. He felt that his uncertainty as to their expression gave the
+matter an interest that it did not intrinsically possess. Even if she
+were smiling, what did it matter?
+
+Suddenly she turned to him.
+
+"Has Monsieur anything more to conceal from me?" she asked.
+
+Maurice capitulated. It was a delightful formula. He wished that he had
+thought of it himself. It was she, he said, who had been hiding things
+from him. Her eyes, for instance. All this time he had been wondering
+about the expression of her eyes.
+
+"And yet you deny the potency of the country," she sighed, "the
+miracle-working country, which compels a young man of twenty-seven to
+wonder about the expression of an old woman of forty-four."
+
+"Madame," he said, "I am very old. I have ceased to take myself
+seriously. You are very young, for you can force others to treat you
+with curiosity and respect."
+
+She reminded him that eight minutes ago he had taken himself seriously.
+"It was you who made me," he retorted, "you have given me back my
+youth."
+
+They went on like that for quite a long time--gallant lawn-tennis--long
+base line rallies with an occasional smash. And then he said that he
+must be indiscreet--specifically so. Why had she come to St.
+Jean-les-Flots?
+
+It was, she explained meditatively, an escape (he noticed that it was
+the second time that she had used that word). The Hotel Bungalow was
+very clean, the food was good, the air was marvellous....
+
+She pulled herself together.
+
+When you took a holiday, she said, you had to make a careful choice
+between old acquaintances and new ones. Which was likely to be the more
+tiring? She herself always went to new places at the wrong time of year.
+Then it was a case of friendship, or nothing. The people who visited
+watering places out of season were always either impossible or
+enchanting. Very often amusingly impossible and temporarily enchanting,
+but so much the better. There is a certain safety in the transitory.
+
+Is Madame married? Maurice asked abruptly. It was the sort of question
+that had to be asked brusquely, or not at all.
+
+"Yes--No--Yes. That is to say, I have a husband. He will probably come
+here for a day or two later. He is tres comme il faut."
+
+"Surely you do not blame him for coming to see you."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It is magnificent, but it is not life. One is not always young enough
+to permit oneself these phantasies. At fifty-six it is silly to waste
+two days visiting some one you don't want to see. But there, Edmond is
+like that. Oh! the stability when he says 'my wife.' It is superb. It
+must be grand, too, when he says 'ma maitresse'; he has the property
+sense. And how he adores women, woman, all women, any woman. Even
+sometimes me. And when he doesn't, he keeps the habits. Toujours des
+petits soins. He never goes out of training, even at home."
+
+"He sounds charming to live with."
+
+"Ah, yes. That is it. He is charming. One cannot bear it. To have the
+five-finger exercises of his irresistibility played on one. To be the
+stiff piano on which he practises but never plays. It is too much. And
+one remembers the days when one was the concert grand. Pouf. It is not
+agreeable."
+
+There was a pause. Maurice knew that she was going to say a great many
+other things.
+
+But they had reached the Hotel Bungalow. Regretfully they parted.
+
+He thought that she was a very remarkable woman indeed.
+
+She thought how like her husband he was. Her husband twenty-five years
+ago.
+
+At dinner she still was in black and white. Black covered with filmy
+laces, soft and shadowy and mysterious. After dinner they sat on the
+terrace and looked out at the inky relentless sea.
+
+"Being sensible is no good at all," she said with sudden passion.
+"Courage is the only helpful virtue; when I married I was young and very
+pretty and I had thought about life a lot. I knew that in men fidelity
+had the importance that they gave to it. To a few--very few--it
+matters--but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing
+at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk--squalid, if
+you like--but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on
+the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both
+sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved
+women--_psychologically_. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real
+sin against marriage. He was a great lover, an artist. Every woman was
+to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist. The
+colours and the sounds he got were marvellous. Sometimes he would try
+impossible subjects--for fun--but always he could bring some sort of
+harmony out of everything. Ma foi, it amuses me to watch him now--now
+that it is difficult, and he is fifty-six and I don't love him--but
+then, when everything was easy and he was twenty-seven and I cared--then
+it was--well, it was different."
+
+The way that her voice opened and shut reminded him of a sea anemone.
+
+"It is not the way to talk to a stranger, is it?" she said abruptly,
+"but I feel as if I had known you for a long time. For twenty-five
+years, to be exact," she added.
+
+Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied. He longed to tell her about Marthe.
+For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to
+make. He wondered why.
+
+"Bon soir, Monsieur," she said, and she walked up to bed with a
+characteristic lack of pause or hesitation.
+
+Maurice woke up--was woken up--knowing that he had something to look
+forward to. Sleepily he wondered what it was while patterns spread over
+his semi-consciousness--dreamily he saw Marthe in a filmy lace dress
+over black and he felt himself trying to play on a grand piano, every
+note of which was a sea anemone. Then he woke up completely, and with a
+delightful rush he remembered Madame and all of the marvellous things
+that she had told him and all of the significant things he had not yet
+said to her.
+
+He walked down to breakfast whistling. In the courtyard he patted the
+dog and lifted the patron's son on to his shoulder, then he asked the
+patronne if the cook had a name and whether he might some day come and
+watch her churn butter. In the dining room he praised the coffee, and
+admired the geraniums. St. Jean-les-Flots must have a particularly fine
+soil for geraniums, and what air! Why, he felt a different man already.
+
+Madame Marly--he had discovered her name--did not appear till lunch.
+They bowed to one another, and each talked a little to the waiter. It
+was delightful to keep their pleasure at arm's length. Coffee on the
+terrace brought them together.
+
+"You are right," she said, "the country is an impossible place. It makes
+one talk."
+
+"I love the country," he said.
+
+"And then the sea. It is always going on without you."
+
+"I have a passion for the sea," he murmured.
+
+"I would like to wring the neck of the cook, chloroform the dog, buy
+Marie Aimee some lawn tennis shoes, and have a daily box of flowers from
+Paris."
+
+"They shall be ordered at once."
+
+"I should also like," she was looking out to sea, "to fill the hotel
+with people."
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"Perhaps," she added, "it would be simpler to go away."
+
+"Simpler but impossible."
+
+"Why impossible?"
+
+"The air is unique. The Hotel Bungalow...."
+
+"Please don't," she begged.
+
+"Besides, for the first time in my life I am becoming discreet."
+
+"Ah, no, my friend, believe me. It was merely that you, too, found it
+difficult to interrupt."
+
+"I did not want to interrupt."
+
+"There you had an advantage over me. I was longing to bring your
+remarks about the sea to an untimely end."
+
+Her laugh was the most confidential thing in the world. You felt as if
+she had given you an unlimited credit of intimacy. He thought that she
+was looking ten years younger in her creamy crepe de Chine dress, with
+her big straw hat, which seemed to have conquered, without an effort,
+the perfection and simplicity of the absolute.
+
+"What is it called?" he asked fingering it.
+
+"Crepe surprise."
+
+He asked her to describe its lines, but she refused.
+
+"Ne parlons pas robes," she said.
+
+They decided to go for a drive.
+
+The cocher explained that he had lost his wife, but that "Lisette etait
+un tres bon petit cheval."
+
+They laughed--at him, at one another, at the sun, at the sea, at
+everything. He told her about the convolvuluses, and she said he ought
+to write a book.
+
+He told her his name.
+
+She puckered her forehead a little, and looked to him for help.
+
+He explained rather stiffly that he had written three novels, a book of
+short sketches, a book of light verse, and a phantasy on Algeria.
+
+She asked what they were called. He told her.
+
+She asked which was the best.
+
+He said that "Sur les Rives" had the best things in it. Perhaps it was
+less finished than some of the others, but it was on a bigger scale, the
+conception was more interesting.
+
+She asked what the conception was.
+
+He told her that it was about a woman who, out of affection for her
+husband, and deep intrinsical virtue, refuses to become the mistress of
+the man she passionately adores. He goes away and she gives herself to
+the first person she meets with a look of him. Her original great
+struggle has exhausted all her powers of resistance.
+
+Madame Marly was silent.
+
+"It is true," she said, "for big things we have big resistances, and for
+little things little resistances. And so we live our lives in small weak
+lapses--not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering
+our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf," she made a
+little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. "We occupy the
+places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl
+in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we
+occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We
+dissolve into air."
+
+"Not you," he said. "I feel it. You are so independent, so sure. Where
+are your hesitations? Your very doubts are challenges to truth."
+
+"Challenges to truth," she said. "It is a nice phrase."
+
+Driving back into the sunset they were silent. He wrapped her cloak
+round her, and once he kissed her hand, but it didn't feel as if it
+belonged to her. Her thoughts had taken her right away out of his
+presence, out of the carriage beyond the sunset. Where had they taken
+her? He wondered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night she came down, dressed in glowing apricot--"fold after fold
+to the fainting air."
+
+As always, her clothes seemed part of her, without ends or beginnings,
+flowing from her, a streaming enhancing accompaniment. He asked her if
+her dress were nymphe emue or feuille morte. He was proud of knowing
+those two names. She said it was neither. He begged her to tell him, but
+she refused rather abruptly to discuss it. He said he loved her
+clothes--that he would like to know....
+
+"Pour l'amour de Dieu, ne parlons pas robes."
+
+He wondered at her irritability, but he obeyed.
+
+They went out on to the terrace. The sea was black and angry, all the
+waves at cross purposes.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Paula."
+
+"What will you say when I tell you that I love you, that I want you?"
+
+"You won't tell me because you will know that I don't want you to."
+
+Her voice was a part of the wind.
+
+"Why don't you want me to?" he was urgent--harsh with desire.
+
+"Because it all happened twenty-five years ago."
+
+He didn't understand.
+
+"Because--because there are some things you can't do twice--like your
+book, they are the big things that create a strength of resistance.
+Because they are the beautiful things that belong to our dreams. Because
+they are of a magic fabric, into which you can weave no facts."
+
+It was dark and he could not see her. The end of his cigarette was a
+bright spot in the night. The sea and the wind were the counterpoint of
+her voice.
+
+He felt unreal and remote and small. A tiny strand in the vast design of
+destiny.
+
+She got up and walked in. He did not move.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thank you for the flowers."
+
+The sun was glittering frivolous and cynical.
+
+The box he had ordered from Paris had arrived. First there was a mass of
+Juliette roses--gilt and velvet--then a staircase of sweet peas,
+flame-coloured, coral, crimson, magenta, purple, bronze and black.
+
+Both together they drank in the blaze of colour.
+
+Ecstatically he said to her,
+
+"You can't thank _me_, can you? They are too beautiful."
+
+"Perhaps not," she said, "but it was beauty unleashed by you."
+
+He looked at her with adoring eyes. She gave you phrases which lit
+torches in your soul.
+
+They walked down the beach together. The sea was light and mutinous.
+
+"How untransparent it is," he said, "lapis lazuli and turquoise and
+chrysoprase--no emeralds or aquamarines, or sapphires."
+
+"How are we to get in our purple without an amethyst?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"That is what comes from not reading the Book of Revelations," she said.
+
+They saw big, dissolving, poisonous jellyfish in the sea, mysteriously
+without lines--and tidy slabs of jellyfish on the beach. They found a
+starfish, and wondered who came to dance a sword dance round it. They
+picked up shells that looked as if they had fallen out of fading sunsets
+or glimmering dawns--they looked into pools of shutting and opening sea
+anemones.
+
+They never noticed a sardine box or an old boot.
+
+They were happy.
+
+Over her head was a scarlet paper sunshade. It looked like a huge
+tropical flower.
+
+"Paula," he said--and his eyes opened to her like a magic trap door.
+
+That night they stayed indoors.
+
+"Tell me the things that life has given you," he said, "the things that
+have made you so rich."
+
+"If I am rich," she said, "it is from the things that _I_ have given."
+
+"Yes," he said, "but why do you impoverish yourself at my expense?"
+
+"Please," she said, "don't talk about that. There are in all of us
+exposed places--you can call them pain or romance--Sehnsucht or
+memory--but they are the sanctuaries of our hearts--they cannot be
+violated."
+
+"Paula," he said, "you have made too much of life. You have made it into
+the sort of hope that is always a disillusionment."
+
+"Yes," she murmured very low.
+
+"Why were you so unpractical?" his bantering tone revived her.
+
+"I have done for some one (even for you, perhaps) what I have never done
+for myself;" she was smiling. "I will tell you a story. There was once a
+man who loved me. He was born with everything--a marvellous name, great
+riches, beauty, a magnetic quality that I have never seen equalled. I
+always reproached him with having added nothing to his inheritance--no
+glory--no achievement--'I have spent,' he would say, shrugging his
+shoulders. 'Wasted,' I retorted tartly. 'If you like. I have never
+admitted my past or my future as barriers--or even frontiers--to my
+actions. I have lived without forethought or arriere pensee--without the
+weakness of regrets or the stinginess of precautions,' and then he
+turned to me--his eyes were half shut and his voice was muffled as if a
+flood were battering on the door of his dispassionateness, 'I have had
+everything in life except you,' he said. I smiled at him, a little
+sadly, a little cynically. 'It is I who have given you the greatest
+gift,' I said. 'I have given you a regret and an illusion. Vous avez
+donc tout eu.' That night he killed himself."
+
+"And you, Paula, did you feel a murderess?"
+
+"No, a saviour."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was dressed in pale lilac--the coolest lilac in the world. It
+rippled round her like loving caressing waves.
+
+"What is your dress called, Paula?"
+
+"Oasis," she said. "'Indian summer' would have been a better name."
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Why do you always want to know?"
+
+"I am writing a book."
+
+"Tant pis."
+
+She was out of temper.
+
+The flowers arrived.
+
+Old-fashioned pink roses, coral carnations, purple stocks, pink pinks,
+mauve orchids, moss roses, patterned chintz-like phlox.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and for a moment she shut her eyes.
+
+Then:
+
+"Tell me about her," she said.
+
+"Marthe?"
+
+"Is that her name?"
+
+"She is vibrant."
+
+"But of course. What does she look like?"
+
+"Her hair is like a dirty new coin. You feel that you could polish it
+into brightness. Her eyes are like tea--yellow camomile tea. Her mouth
+is big and rather grave. There are electric waves of aliveness running
+all through her."
+
+"I do not like her."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"All that irrelevant, interfering vitality. It is dangerous."
+
+"And slumbering, mysterious magnetism, is that not dangerous?"
+
+"That, too."
+
+There was a thunderstorm and the air got cool.
+
+Madame Marly had a headache and dined in her room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day was grey--grey air, a grey sky, a grey countryside, a grey
+sea--not luminous, lustrous grey, but opaque chiffon drawn across the
+world.
+
+Paula's flowers had arrived--lemon-coloured hollyhocks, blue and mauve
+and purple delphiniums, filmy love-in-the-mist, primrose antirrhinums,
+snowy Madonna lilies with golden middles, huge creamy roses, tiny yellow
+rosebuds, straggling larkspurs.
+
+She was dressed in a grey whipcord coat and skirt with a grey swathed
+turban. She looked distant--on the brink of disappearance--not so much
+as if she were going to travel but as if she were going to vanish.
+
+She regarded the flowers with grave concentration. It was as if she felt
+for them a stern passionate devotion. She took one of the white roses
+and stroked it--as if it were a shy mother with her first child. Then
+she said:
+
+"I want to go for a long walk."
+
+They walked for miles and miles. The mist sprinkled her hair with
+dew-drops. It looked quite white. Her eyes were deep and brooding and
+you couldn't catch them.
+
+"Paula," Maurice said, "how remote you are."
+
+"Am I?" she said. And it made her more remote than ever.
+
+He walked desperately, as if each step were an obstacle painfully
+overcome. She walked with a swaying unconscious rhythm, as if she did
+not know what she was doing.
+
+She cut off his perfunctory attempts at conversation with a
+monosyllable. When they got home they were both tired.
+
+They each decided to have a hot bath and rest before dinner.
+
+She was dressed in very severe perfect black, marvellous lines, waiting
+to be sculpted.
+
+He told her so.
+
+She pursed her lips.
+
+They sat in front of the fire in the hall.
+
+"Tell me a little more about your husband?" he said.
+
+"What can I tell you? I know him so well. You see, I have loved him and
+hated him--I have become indifferent to him--and I appreciate him. But I
+have had nothing from him that a hundred other people have not
+had--except, perhaps, his name."
+
+"Marly?"
+
+She looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Marly?" she laughed. "Marly is not even my own name. We are all of us
+so very monogamous when we love, proprietary, exclusive, jealous,
+whatever you like to call it. Edmond's character was like a pergola.
+You walked in and out. There were always roses and jasmine, clematis and
+wisteria, peeps of the garden and patches of the sky--but never a shut
+door--never one. Oh," there was a breaking passion in her voice--"how I
+longed for four walls, for a lock and key, for a dungeon, for bars.
+'Don't you know,' I would say to him, 'that much trodden territory
+becomes neutral?' and he would smile and say, 'you are generous.'"
+
+Maurice was looking into the fire.
+
+"Poor little Paula," he said. "But you were his only wife."
+
+"Yes," she said, "a law-given copyright."
+
+"Paula," he said, "will you do something for me?"
+
+"I wonder. There are surely no somethings where we are concerned."
+
+"I want you to describe several dresses to me. Your own perfect divine
+dresses. I want them for my book."
+
+"So I am to be made use of, am I?"
+
+Her eyes were flashing.
+
+He was not looking at her.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am going to steal some of your genius."
+
+She had left him. He was not surprised. She never said "Good-night."
+
+The next day she had gone--very early, leaving no address, no letter.
+
+She had, he heard, left his box of flowers at the village infirmary. He
+knew that that day it was to have been full of verbena, sweet geranium,
+sweet briar, thyme, myrtle, lavender and single roses....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marthe had insisted that he should come with her to Lally. He was
+feeling foolish and fascinated--dressing was evidently a religion with
+the most solemn rites in the world. The gravity and concentration of
+every one astounded him--the firm vendeuse refusing to allow her cliente
+any freedom of choice. The pathetic cliente pining in vain for forbidden
+fruit--the hopelessly ugly and unrewarding, who alone were permitted to
+follow their fancies. Patterns were discussed in hushed but intense
+undertones, faint but all-important modifications were offered by the
+vendeuse to bridge the gulf between the figures of the mannequins and
+those of the clients. The brave longing of a squat pigeon to have the
+model reproduced "textuellement" was resolutely suppressed.
+
+Marthe was discussing her vendeuse's child....
+
+And then suddenly Maurice saw Madame Marly. She was without a hat and
+scattering her terrified staff with her eye.
+
+She came straight to him, her voice was mocking.
+
+"Maintenant, je peux donner des renseignements a Monsieur."
+
+"I did not know," he blurted, "I had no idea," and then as the ultimate
+significance of their meeting disentangled itself from the immediate
+embarrassment,
+
+"Thank God, I have found you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mlle. de Marveau married the Comte de Cely.
+
+The Comtesse de Cely wanted an escape and became Madame Lalli.
+
+Madame Lalli wanted an escape and became Madame Marly--for Paula was
+always Paula.
+
+And then she met Maurice and her youth. Twenty-five years of age and
+experience and disappointment fell from her. But to keep her great
+illusion she offered her big resistance....
+
+And then the tiny knife turned in the tiny wound. The unconscious
+buzzing machine touched the exposed nerve--the silly, absurd, irrelevant
+name.
+
+The lover in pursuit of the beloved became the novelist examining the
+dressmaker, seeking for information. When professional meets
+professional.
+
+This time she capitulated for she ran away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Maurice wrote to her.
+
+"Paula, I love you. I loved you always. I loved you invulnerable, wise,
+fortified beyond the wiles of men. How much more do I love you now with
+your one weak spot--so weak, so absurd that it can only be kissed, and
+laughed at and adored.
+
+"Paula, my own, the twenty-five years have never existed. There is only
+one immortal moment--and that is to come.
+
+"Beloved, best beloved, only beloved, I want you so badly.
+
+"MAURICE.
+
+"Besides, you have got to describe me several dresses for my new book."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+AULD LANG SYNE
+
+[_To HAROLD NICOLSON_]
+
+
+It was delightful to be back in England after two and a half years. Two
+and a half years of India, of pomp and circumstance and being envied, of
+heat and homesickness and loneliness. How starved she had felt--starved
+of little intellectual coteries with their huge intellectual
+sensations--starved of new books and old pictures and music, of moss
+roses and primroses and bluebell woods, starved even into the
+selfishness of coming home, urged away by Robert, who did not know how
+to be selfish. Thinking of him made her feel very tender and very small.
+His iron public spirit, his inevitable devotion to duty, unconscious and
+instinctive and uncensorious, combined with a guilty sense that her
+youth and beauty had been uprooted by him, and put into a dusty distant
+soil. He was more convinced than any one of the importance of books and
+music and intellectual interests (he never read and did not know one
+note from another) because they were important to her and had therefore
+received a consecration they could never have had by merely being
+important to him. It was all so very simple--What she admired was
+beautiful; what she laughed at was funny; what she loved was divine--And
+she belonged to him--Robert. It was a miracle that found him every night
+on his knees in humble gratitude. She had, he thought, been so
+wonderfully good, walking on his red baize carpets as if they were
+fields of flowers, learning Sanscrit with passion and pretending, with
+what seemed to him complete success, and to them, absolute failure, that
+she liked Anglo-Indian women. When one by one his staff were
+incapacitated by love, he never complained. It made them of course
+useless, but how could they help falling in love with her? It would have
+been so unnatural if they had not. And when she told him--and to do her
+justice she knew that she was telling him the truth--that she was not
+worthy to do up his shoe laces--he would laugh and kiss her hand and
+send up a little internal prayer to God to be able to do something to
+deserve his wife.
+
+No wonder he was always urging her to go home--haunted as he was by the
+feeling of having put her in a prison and, no wonder, not having his
+iron character, she had finally succumbed--as she so often succumbed to
+his unselfishness.
+
+How she was loving England! The wet, heavy air--the sky curtained with
+clouds--the drenched leaves--the saturated flowers--the damp breathing
+earth--the distant lethargic sun. She could feel a pulse in the sopping
+soil and her heart beat with it.
+
+Finding her friends too was such an adventure. What struck her most
+about them was that they seemed so stationary. There they were, just as
+she had left them, doing the same things, thinking the same things,
+saying the same things--fixed points with their lives revolving round
+them, seeming to have lost the capacity for independent motion.
+
+She and Robert were not like that. Thank God, they were still pilgrims.
+After all, her life had been a big spacious thing in spite of India,
+because of India and, even more, because of Robert. Only she did not
+want to think about it now. Just to go on repeating to herself: "I'm at
+home. I'm in England."
+
+And she was going to stay with St. John. How excited she would have been
+four years ago. How her heart had beaten when she heard his footsteps,
+how she had thrilled when he had said "dear" to her. She remembered the
+care he had taken of her, the beautiful considerate devotion he had
+always shown her when she was longing so passionately for other things,
+trying with all her might and main to make him lose his head. _How_
+badly she had behaved. She could wonder now dispassionately whether he
+had _ever_ been in love with her. On the whole, she thought, he never
+had. If she had not been married--it was a silly "if." The most he had
+said was "you make things very difficult," not a very satisfactory
+avowal when you came to think it over calmly. But she remembered how it
+had thrilled her at the time--what a blank cheque of possibilities it
+had seemed. She remembered, too, the evening when he had talked
+seriously to her--very gently, very tenderly, very gravely. She had
+thought he was going to say, "I don't want to be made unhappy," and,
+instead, he had said, "I don't want you to be unhappy." That had been a
+nasty one. How she had lashed him with her tongue! What inexhaustible
+reserves of icy acid she had brought forward.
+
+She had tried to hurt him as much as ever she could. How hurt had he
+been? She wondered. It was all such very ancient history. And yet he had
+gone on being fond of her. Fonder and fonder--men were so odd.
+
+So many things had happened since then. She had been away and he had
+lost an uncle and inherited a property. And now she was going to stay
+with him. Last time they had met, two years ago, he had talked to her as
+if they had had a boy and girl affair thirty years before. She had been
+very much amused but she had hidden it; hiding your amusement was an
+essential part of being fond of St. John--a rule of the game, so to
+speak. That was one of the delightful things about him; to like him at
+all you had to be really devoted to him and when you had reached that
+stage, all of the qualities that would have been intolerable in other
+people became subtly lovable. Somehow they seemed to creep under your
+wing, compelling you to give them the protection of your own intimate
+understanding. It was impossible not to make pets of St. John's defects.
+Ariadne remembered the way he had always tried to keep her out of moral
+draughts, how he had hated to see her in a room with any one of a
+doubtful reputation, how her habit of taking off her hat in motors in
+towns got on his nerves.
+
+"But if it tires my head," she would say, and he would explain very
+seriously what an intimate gesture it was.
+
+Then as she always rested before dinner, people would come to tea with
+her in her bedroom. St. John didn't like it at all. There was to him
+something inherently disreputable about the horizontal. If she were too
+tired to sit up in an armchair, she was too tired to see any one--except
+him, of course, who understood her (which was just what he didn't do).
+
+"But my back does ache so easily. After all, if I were really ill you
+wouldn't mind."
+
+"That is different."
+
+"How ill do I have to be before I can abdicate the perpendicular in the
+presence of a young man?" He consoled himself with the thought that she
+was extremely, exceptionally innocent. She told him that thousands of
+people were extremely, exceptionally innocent. It was a fact which could
+never be explained to juries. St. John doubted it. He believed in a vast
+number of rules to which all of the people he liked and most of the
+people he knew were exceptions.
+
+The train drew up at the platform. Ariadne got out. The footman
+explained to her that his Lordship was so very sorry not to be able to
+come to the station, but he was attending a cattle show.
+
+"Of course," said Ariadne, and she felt it.
+
+She got into the brougham--it was so characteristic of St. John not to
+use a motor in the country--which had that delightful, almost forgotten,
+smell of broughams, and drove through an avenue of oaks up to the fine
+old Georgian house, dignified and mellow and lived in--a house proud of
+its cellar and its stables--of its linen and its silver--a house where
+men were men and women were women--where the master hunted and sat on
+the Bench, and the mistress embroidered and looked after the
+household--each having his separate functions and the one joint one of
+propagating the race.
+
+In the hall, St. John's housekeeper, in a black taffetas apron,
+welcomed her.
+
+"His Lordship would be most distressed not to have been there when her
+ladyship arrived, but the cattle show----"
+
+"Of course," said Ariadne, and hinted at a quite special awareness of
+the importance of Cattle Shows.
+
+Her bedroom was immense--there were lavender bags in all the drawers,
+and flowers on the dressing table, the fire was lit and there was
+boiling water in the shiny pale brass can. Her maid, the housekeeper
+explained, was sleeping in the dressing room. On the table by her bed
+was a glass box of biscuits, "The Wrong Box," "Omar Khayyam" and Lucas
+Malet's last novel.
+
+Ariadne was smiling with happiness. Talk about the joys of the
+unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding
+everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?
+There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+"It's I." (St. John never said "It's me.")
+
+She threw open the door.
+
+"Do come in," she said, and then, with a little stab of extra pleasure,
+she wondered if he would be shocked by her flimsy pink dressing gown and
+her bare feet.
+
+"St. John," she put out both her hands. "I _am_ happy to be here."
+
+He took them and held them quite tight, then he kissed them.
+
+"Little Ariadne," he said.
+
+It was, she supposed, a way of getting over the dressing gown.
+
+"You look younger than ever," he said.
+
+"It's my hair being down," she murmured.
+
+He asked her if she had had a good journey, and whether the housekeeper
+had seen that she had everything she wanted.
+
+She asked him if the cattle show had been a success.
+
+He said he really must dress for dinner, and so must she.
+
+"Ariadne," he put his hand on her arm, "it's good to have you here."
+
+There was an emotion welling up in his voice that surprised her. He
+turned his back and left the room rather hurriedly. She realised that he
+had almost kissed her. Would he have said, "I'm sorry, but you looked
+such a baby," or, "Forgive me, it was seeing you again after so long,"
+or, "Ariadne, can you forgive me? I lost my head."
+
+She plumped for the baby, and wondered if the visit could conceivably be
+going to be a slight strain. In old days there had always been a certain
+tenseness about their relationship, made worse by her attempts to
+topple over his gentlemanliness. She had felt that if her wish could
+have been gratified just once, she would have been released from it and
+never have wanted to repeat the experiment. Also a little of the
+responsibility would have been his--thus obliterating the irritating
+daily spectacle of his untarnished blamelessness.
+
+Of course he had never been in love with her. She had always been buoyed
+up by little things she wouldn't even have noticed in some one she
+hadn't cared about. If there were acute disquieting moments when the
+troublante quality of her loveliness tossed him about
+unmercifully--weren't they moments that any stranger might go through
+sitting next to her at dinner? No--the truth always had been that he was
+really fond of her.
+
+"I'm glad now," she smiled to herself, "how lucky that we can't always
+sculpt our own relationships."
+
+She went down to dinner--in the huge hall full of armchairs and cushions
+and antlers and comfort St. John stood with his back to the fire smoking
+a cigarette which he threw into the grate when he saw her (St. John
+invariably threw away his cigarette when you came into the room and then
+asked your permission to light a new one. In her mind's eye Ariadne
+always saw him opening the door for his wife after a violent scene with
+her).
+
+"My dear," she said, "what a divine house."
+
+"The wing you are sleeping in was built by the fifth Lord....
+
+"The staircase was designed by....
+
+"The mantelpieces in the drawing room....
+
+"After dinner I will show you...."
+
+Dinner was announced.
+
+She tucked her hand under his arm.
+
+"Are you going to take me in to dinner, St. John?"
+
+"Of course," he smiled at her.
+
+The dining room was big enough to reduce the immense pieces of Georgian
+silver--beautiful they were--to reasonable proportions.
+
+St. John said there were some very fine pieces of Queen Anne which he
+would show her.
+
+"There was," she murmured, "nothing like Queen Anne."
+
+The attentiveness of the footman and even of the butler did not seem to
+her to be entirely confined to their wants.
+
+St. John asked her questions about India, which she answered as she
+answered travelling Europeans--correctly, concisely, and without any
+frills of vocabulary. It was quite possible, she reflected, that St.
+John wanted to know the answers to his questions. That was the worst of
+being abroad so much, you were always either trying to tell things it
+bored people to hear, or else they were determined to hear things that
+it bored you to tell. Her mind wandered to the curious tide-like quality
+of interest, the way it advanced and retreated in a conversation.
+
+St. John was explaining what a quiet life he had led. Perhaps, to her,
+it would have even seemed dull. (This to him was rhetorical paradox, and
+to her an obvious truth.) She did not know, he said, what it meant to
+feel that the land belonged to you--to see your own flowers growing,
+your own calves being born--to feel yourself surrounded by your own
+people, for whose happiness and welfare you were responsible.
+
+Ariadne said that inheritance was a sacred trust (it was wonderful how
+easy she found it to talk like St. John).
+
+"Yes," he said, "that is just it--a sacred trust. Why, I hardly ever go
+up to London now, and when I do, I feel quite homesick till I get here
+again."
+
+They got up from dinner.
+
+"Shall we go and sit in the library?" he said.
+
+They sat one on either side of the fire. She felt like an ancestress or
+a family portrait. The rosy haze of her tea-gown looked strange and
+alien fluttering in the huge leather armchair.
+
+"What a wisp you look," St. John said. She remembered how satisfactory
+her tininess had always been to him. "I think I could blow you away with
+a puff of smoke."
+
+"I am a limpet really," she laughed, "think how I have stuck to your
+life."
+
+"Thank God," he affirmed fervently.
+
+"Are you still a great flirt, St. John?"
+
+He looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You have surely not forgotten the way you played fast and loose with
+me?"
+
+"Ariadne," he was using the firm voice she knew so well, "you mustn't
+talk like that."
+
+"But you did. Don't you remember that dinner you gave when we went to
+the L----'s ball and you never danced with me till seventeen minutes
+past one?"
+
+"My dear, I was saving you up. The joy after all the duties."
+
+"You never told me so."
+
+"There were a lot of things I never told you."
+
+"I tried so hard to make you."
+
+"It was so hard not to."
+
+"St. John," she said, "the things you didn't tell me, were they true?"
+
+"Yes, they were true."
+
+He had got up and knelt by her chair.
+
+She put her hand on his head.
+
+"St. John," she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That
+he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That
+what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry
+had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection?
+Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than she had ever
+heard it before. Of course he had not been in love with her. She had
+never realised it as clearly as to-night. For a moment he put his face
+in her lap, then he kissed her hands--reverently, in memory of his great
+sacrifice.
+
+"May I smoke a cigarette?" he asked.
+
+"Please do."
+
+He went back to his chair.
+
+She was, he said, a wonderful friend.
+
+So, she said, was he.
+
+They talked about his family and her family--a little about their mutual
+friends and a lot about friends of his that she had never seen.
+
+They talked about furniture and gardens.
+
+There were, he said, a lot of subjects on which he wanted her advice.
+
+It was all very domestic, their two armchairs and the fire--the dying
+fire. He must, she supposed, be imagining that they were married, seeing
+her at the head of the table, in the family pew. She wondered if he
+would have let her re-set the family jewels. Perhaps his mind had
+reached the nursery. He was dreaming of children, his children, her
+children, their children.
+
+Dear St. John. She looked at him tenderly. She longed to explain what an
+unsuitable wife she would have made him.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" her voice was very gentle.
+
+"I was thinking of the cattle I bought to-day, and wondering what sort
+of fencing I should put up at the bottom of the drive. Ariadne, you
+remember how gregarious I used to be; well, you can't think how
+perfectly happy I am living here alone."
+
+Smiles were popping out of her face shamelessly. No sooner had she kept
+one out of her eyes than it reappeared on her lips.
+
+"Dear St. John," she said, "I do love you."
+
+He looked, she thought, a little alarmed.
+
+"Not like that, that is all over."
+
+"Quite over?"
+
+"Quite--are you glad?"
+
+"If it makes you happier," and then, "No, I'm damned if I'm glad."
+
+"Thank you, St. John," she was laughing a little.
+
+He looked puzzled, even rather disappointed.
+
+She had broken the rules and laughed.
+
+"How lucky you didn't say that to me four years ago."
+
+"Don't," he said sharply.
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+He was lighting her candle.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "you will choose the colour of the garden gates
+and advise me about the fencing."
+
+"That _will_ be fun."
+
+She shivered.
+
+"Are you cold?"
+
+"One is always cold after India."
+
+He took her to the door of her bedroom.
+
+"Good-night--God bless you," he said.
+
+She put her two hands on his shoulders and, bending forward, she kissed
+him lightly. It was a cruel way of showing him that she didn't care any
+more.
+
+"What a revengeful woman I am, punishing him after all these years," she
+thought.
+
+But he didn't see it like that.
+
+"I think I deserve her trust," he said to himself, and then his
+thoughts, let out to graze, returned to the subject of fences.
+
+"Robert," wrote Ariadne, "I am homesick for India."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+TWO TAXI DRIVES
+
+[_To PAUL MORAND_]
+
+I: SUNSHINE
+
+
+"Margaret, my dear, how delightful."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"But of course."
+
+"I always wonder," she murmured, "about accidental and sudden meetings.
+They are a sort of nervous shock and you always feel that you are
+looking for something that you've mislaid and that you don't seem able
+to find again until you've parted."
+
+"How depressing you are. Looking for mislaid intimacy, do you mean?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"When I saw you I simply felt--Margaret, thank God!"
+
+"Matthew, you old humbug."
+
+"And for you who specialise in intimacy and the unexpected, it is simply
+disgraceful."
+
+"But I don't."
+
+"You used to."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you a reformed character?"
+
+"A reformed experimentalist."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"Matthew, after all I _am_ glad to see you."
+
+"Then let us take a taxi and drive round the Bois."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You're not reformed at all. If you were, you would say, 'I've got to
+try on,' or, 'there are so many things I must do before lunch,' or 'I am
+only in Paris for such a short time.'"
+
+"They're all true."
+
+"Of course--that sort of thing is always true. The point is, is it
+relevant?"
+
+"Talking of specialists. Do you still specialise in the irrelevant?"
+
+"I have never understood what that word meant when applied to my
+activities. I have still kept my sense of proportion, if that is what
+you are driving at?"
+
+"And Virginia?"
+
+"Is still Virginia."
+
+"And you love her?"
+
+"Very often."
+
+"Not all the time?"
+
+"Certainly not. How then should I have my opportunities of discovering
+that I loved her?"
+
+"Does she like your method?"
+
+"I wonder. Sometimes it gets on her nerves."
+
+"Poor Virginia."
+
+"It is ridiculous to pity Virginia. Every one adores her and she meddles
+about in people's lives to her heart's content."
+
+"I always pity women who care for charming men."
+
+"Why--because charming men are fickle?"
+
+"No, because they are vulnerable."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"Charm is the dragon's blood."
+
+"But the leaf always falls somewhere."
+
+"And the weak spot is vanity--which is no use to one at all."
+
+"By the way, how is Michael, talking of charming men. Or, were we
+talking about them?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Margaret, I don't like Michael."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He is too complete."
+
+"Do you usually tell women that you don't like their husbands?"
+
+"No, they usually tell it to me."
+
+"Is that what you suggest that I am doing?"
+
+"Margaret, please. You know I didn't mean that. It was just an idiotic
+jeu de mots."
+
+"Matthew, be careful; if you are serious you will turn my head."
+
+"I would love to turn your head."
+
+"Why is it that you always make me indiscreet?"
+
+"I suppose that I inspire people with the happy illusion that I am not
+going to take what they say seriously."
+
+"I suppose that is it."
+
+"By the way, what was India like?"
+
+"Do you want to know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"I stayed with Ariadne."
+
+"Is she happy?"
+
+"Radiant."
+
+"Loving pomp?"
+
+"Loving Robert."
+
+"Dear me."
+
+"Robert is the most wonderful man in the world."
+
+"Well, he wanted to marry you; why didn't you marry him?"
+
+"I thought his pedestal such a precarious foothold in life."
+
+"If Ariadne can balance on it for a moment, it must be pretty firm."
+
+"It is a lovely pedestal. You can see for miles from it, and it is as
+comfortable as an armchair."
+
+"Ariadne always had a rare eye for a cushion."
+
+"Ariadne is a perfect wife."
+
+"Margaret, it is absolutely essential that I should see you once every
+twenty-four hours for the rest of my life. You will, therefore, not
+think me too matter-of-fact if I ask you your immediate plans?"
+
+"I am staying here three more days."
+
+"Damn--sixteen hours gone already, I am off to Deauville."
+
+"Then I am going back to London where it will all begin again."
+
+"I shall be there."
+
+"How grand it sounds to be a melodrama."
+
+"Margaret, do you know that I love you a great deal?"
+
+"I know that you are a great flirt."
+
+"Of course. That makes my real love so very exceptional and precious."
+
+"Does Virginia know that?"
+
+"Virginia almost understands everything, but of course she can't afford
+to admit it, or one would behave too impossibly."
+
+"Matthew, may I tell you something very serious?"
+
+"Yes, if you don't expect me to profit by it."
+
+"I used to understand almost everything, and I went on stretching and
+stretching till it broke, and now I understand nothing."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he twinkled at her, "perhaps I had better not
+marry Virginia."
+
+"Are you trying to make me unhappy?"
+
+"Margaret, dearest, I might even be serious if I thought that it would
+make you happy."
+
+"Good heavens, it's one, and I am lunching at one."
+
+"Margaret, promise never to mislay our intimacy again."
+
+"I promise."
+
+That evening there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Monsieur a fait dire que c'etait un bouquet pour Madame."
+
+An immense bunch of balloons followed him into the room.
+
+"For Margaret who--in spite of everything, because of
+everything--understands everything."
+
+"Matthew," she wrote, "how young you make me."
+
+And then she murmured to herself:
+
+"Poor Virginia!"
+
+
+II: LAMPS
+
+"I love you so." The wheels of the taxi were the counterpoint to his
+voice.
+
+"What is the good of my turning away when every bit of him bites into my
+consciousness?" she thought.
+
+The road stretched ahead of them like cire satin with a piping of
+lights. She had changed her position a little, restless under the
+constraint of his eyes. A lamp lit her up for him, her face white and
+drawn, her eyelids pulled over her eyes like a heavy curtain.
+
+"One feels that one could skate down the street," she murmured, "it
+looks like stuff worn thin with time and use--the shabby shiny surface
+of the night."
+
+On and on they went.
+
+"We can't get anywhere," he said.
+
+A lamp lit up her face.
+
+It looked so weary and impotent as if she had abdicated the uneven
+struggle with circumstances.
+
+On they raced, down the slippery ribbon of road.
+
+There was a bump and she fell towards him. He stretched out his arm and
+held her firm and secure. He wanted her to feel that it was a rampart
+and not an insidious outpost of passion quick to take advantage.
+
+"Let me kiss you once, for God's sake," his voice was harsh.
+
+She turned her face towards him. The passing lamp showed her resigned,
+pitying, tender.
+
+"Don't look like that," he said--sharp with the things he had wanted.
+
+"I'm sorry," her voice was velvety and comforting.
+
+Yet another lamp, there was a faint smile on her lips--breathed as it
+were from him. He huddled into his corner, hurt by her compassion.
+
+"I hate to see the moon," she said, "cynical and prying--an eavesdropper
+of a moon."
+
+Again a light gave him a fleeting vision of her--photographed on to his
+soul.
+
+Her deep dark eyes, heavy with distress, the corners of her mouth
+repudiating the misery of the moment. She put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't," she said, "there is in life such an incoherent mass of
+interwoven strands. And perhaps something comes and tears them all to
+bits."
+
+Her voice was chanting--as if she were singing him a lullaby--then it
+became light again.
+
+"Wait till the next lamp," she said. "And you will see in my eyes the
+old laughter that you used to love."
+
+They turned down a side street and there were no more lights.
+
+Abruptly the taxi stopped.
+
+She got out. Her pale gold coat was a continuation of the moon.
+
+She turned her brooding eyes away from him.
+
+"Thank you for taking me home," she said; her voice had broken. She
+looked back--a smile turned on to her lips.
+
+He heard her latch key. The door opened and shut.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A TOUCH OF SPRING
+
+[_To W.Y. TURNER_]
+
+
+The sun was streaming through the curtains silhouetting a strange
+bloated pattern on the chintz, breaking through an opening and cutting a
+deep yellow slit in the carpet. She lay in bed subconsciously awake,
+subconsciously asleep, her thoughts drifting into dreams, her limbs
+merging into one another. "This is happiness," she murmured to herself,
+and feeling consciousness invade her, she clutched at the perfect
+moment, and it was gone.
+
+Smiling at her defeat she stretched herself luxuriously like a cat and
+poked her toes out into a cool expanse of sheet.
+
+"It is nice," she thought, "to have the whole bed to myself."
+
+She curled herself up and lay for a few moments watching the sun
+catching little patches of air and turning them into rainbow dust. Then
+she rang. Her maid let in such a flood of light that she was forced to
+shade her eyes. An unabashed cuckoo broke into the chorus of birds,
+glorying in being a solo part and despising them for mixing and
+intertwining their notes.
+
+She got out of bed and her bare feet sank into the warm furry rug;
+without putting on her slippers she walked across the room, stepping
+like a child into the puddles of sunshine on the carpet. Leaning out of
+the window the air pierced through her transparent nightgown--a tingling
+quality underlying a faint veil of warmth. Everywhere mist and dew lay
+on the countryside like the bloom on a grape. The gardener's boy walking
+across the lawn had left his footprints stamped in emerald on the grass.
+
+Smiling intimately to herself she got into her bath, wondering vaguely
+at the miracle of water, enjoying impersonally the cool whiteness of her
+body, doing tricks of perspective with her arms and legs.
+
+She dressed slowly with indolent rhythmical movements, indifferently
+aware of her effortless inevitable perfection.
+
+Even more slowly she walked down the staircase out through the open
+window on to the grey terrace. Somehow she felt that she was violating
+the morning, forcing the human on to the divine. Sipping the day she
+walked towards the almonds with their pink blush of blossom bursting
+through the brown; turning round her head she saw the double cherry, its
+branches nearly breaking under their load of snow. And at the roots of
+every tree uninvited primroses and violets were crowding out the earth.
+
+She followed the winding terraces towards the gleaming river, past
+fluttering daffodils and wandering narcissi, over riotous anemones and
+bright sturdy scyllae, shaking showers of diamonds off the grasses as she
+went.
+
+The river lay like a long satin streamer, a curling ribbon dropped on
+the meadows. And everywhere, hidden and vibrating, was an urgency of
+life: buds bursting into blossom, birds bursting into flight.
+
+Gradually the veil was lifting from the morning, the sun was rubbing the
+bloom off it as a child rubs sleep from his eyes.
+
+She retraced her steps, putting down her feet with the delicate
+fastidiousness of a cat in order not to tread on a flower. "I'm alone
+with you," she said shyly and ecstatically to the day. Never before had
+she had the Spring to herself. Always there had been the children (now
+on a visit) dragging plans and occupations, games, picnics, and bicycles
+across the pure joy of living, or her husband like a violin very close
+to her ear tearing her nerves to shreds with poignant urgent beauty.
+
+Looking dispassionately at her life, it seemed to her a slum of human
+relationships, airless, over-crowded, a dusty arena where psychological
+acrobats perform by artificial light. And always that dragging of the
+general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the
+personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers
+prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning,
+feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to
+catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some human desire.
+
+This not being a wife, or a mother, or a friend, or a beloved, or even
+herself, but a tiny part of the universal, this surely was happiness. To
+be at one with the morning, to belong to this frontierless world of
+nature, to be coaxed into flower by the sun, to be a strand in some
+unknown design, how much better than the weary steering of your life
+between the Scylla of your ardent futile longings and the Charybdis of
+some senseless malignant providence.
+
+She took her lunch into the wood. The bluebells were still in bud and
+hadn't yet swept everything before them in a headlong rush of waves that
+never broke. She sat in an open space on a patch of velvety moss,
+surrounded by tree trunks and waving windflowers and peeping primroses
+and violets, all diffident forerunners of Spring, shyly enjoying the sun
+before being submerged in that all-conquering flood of blue.
+
+She caressed the ground with her hand and watched little gusts of wind
+play hide and seek with the sun. "I don't believe I've ever been alone
+before," she thought, and she stretched out her arms into the air,
+initiating them into freedom.
+
+Gradually the sun began to sink, throwing a riotous tangle of crimson
+and gold streamers to salute the earth. "They are hauling down the flag
+of my perfect day," she thought with a stab of poignant sorrow.
+
+The sky became the colour of a primrose stalk and as transparent as
+green glass. Before touching the horizon it dissolved into violet
+powder. The colour was being blotted out of everything; one after
+another the flowers went out like lights; only the white cherry seemed
+phosphorescent in the gathering darkness. A thick white mist was
+relentlessly invading everything, climbing higher and higher, enveloping
+her in its cold, wet clutches.
+
+Bewildered and miserable, she struggled forward through the extinguished
+beauty of the world. A thin white sickle of a moon painted on the sky
+looked cynically down at her. Stumbling, shivering, she hurried blindly
+along.
+
+The big stone hall was flickering in the blaze of an immense fire,
+peopled with strange, unreal, clustering shadows. In front of it stood a
+man in a fur coat. He turned towards her with outstretched arms.
+
+"My darling, what have you been doing out without a coat? Look at your
+hair all white with mist and your sopping dress. I can't trust you to
+look after yourself for one day, can I?"
+
+She looked at him as if he were a ghost. A look of blankness and horror.
+
+He gathered her up and carried her to her bedroom. Putting her in a
+chair beside the fire he knelt down and pulled off her shoes and
+stockings.
+
+She felt as if something were breaking inside her. Cold unrelieving
+tears were running down her face.
+
+He was kissing her hands and her feet, murmuring little caresses,
+enveloping her in the glow of his love. And still she couldn't feel any
+warmer.
+
+Putting his arms tight round her he held her close to him, her cold wet
+face nestling in his neck.
+
+"I shall never leave you alone again," he whispered passionately, but to
+his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground with a thud.
+
+At that moment her old maid came in. "Poor wee thing," she said, "don't
+you be worrying and fretting yourself. It's just a touch of the Spring."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+FIDO AND PONTO
+
+
+Fido was a Dalmatian--of the race described by some as blotting paper
+and by others as plum pudding dogs. Every line of his body had been
+formed by hundreds of years of tradition. You can find his ancestors in
+tapestries and petit point in Italian primitives and Flemish family
+groups, nestling in voluminous satin petticoats, or running at the heels
+of skating children--moving in sedate indifference beside the cortege of
+a pope, or barking in gay derision at the tidy Dutch snow. Not "a dog"
+or "the dog" but "dog" unspecified and absolute. True, till 1700 it was
+largely a matter of silhouette, the lissom outline was there, but with a
+certain variety of colouring. Then the 18th century stepped in and made
+spots de rigueur--Dalmatians invaded new territory. They conquered the
+kingdom of china and occupied a commanding position in coaching prints.
+An unaccompanied post chaise, deplorable in life, because unknown in
+art, and the expression "carriage dog" came into use for the first time.
+
+The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and
+when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart
+race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly
+mother of strong and hideous children--progress. Motors were invented.
+
+If machinery had a conscience, what a procession of ghosts would it not
+be haunted by--ghosts of white fingers and humming spinning wheels,
+ghosts of parasols--stiff pagodas of taffetas or rippling fountains of
+lace--ghosts of victorias and barouches and tandems--ghosts of spotted
+streaks of lightning bounding forward with the grace of cats and the
+speed of Derby winners, capering with fastidious frivolity between
+yellow wheels.
+
+Dalmatians, console yourselves, you are in good company. Beside you
+walks the ghost of civilisation herself--surrounded by the phantom forms
+of courtesy and leisure and all the lost company of the divine
+superfluous.
+
+Cause and effect, demand and supply, where does the vicious circle begin
+and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside
+in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with
+transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down
+their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world
+that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained--to die of a broken
+heart.
+
+When I first saw him, he was a puppy--a thin lanky puppy, waiting to be
+filled in by life, a mere sketch of the masterpiece he was to become.
+Even in those days he had heavy black charmeuse ears, marvellous thick
+rich satin they were, and tiny dark rims to his eyes--a setting of
+pencilled shadow. How am I to describe his spots? The wonderful
+distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched
+neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the
+looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves
+into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.
+
+To see him move was to see motion made concrete--to see him run was to
+realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being
+a human.
+
+At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his
+whiteness. His bark was low and deep and resonant--a church bell of a
+bark--it reminded [Transcriber's note: original reads 'remainded'] you
+less of a 'cello than all 'cellos--except M. Casal's--remind you of a
+bark.
+
+He had the divine irrelevant grace of a cat. Always he was showing off,
+practising his paws, curling and stretching and pirouetting, letting
+himself go like an arrow out of a bow, circling on the lawn like a
+swallow above water, giving you daily a thousand illustrations of how
+much you would have lost by only having 100 masterpieces in bronze of
+him.
+
+Living with Fido was a daily revelation of absolute beauty. He was the
+key to the secret of Phidias and Ucello Pascal and Mozart.
+
+But he was alive, warm and gay and moody--joyous and absurd--full of
+little confiding gestures--a nose pressed under one's chin, or a paw
+laid in alluring appeal on one's hand. Withal he was detached with the
+detachment of his separate universe--a divine world of smells and sounds
+and ever new adventurous possibilities, unspoilt by memory and
+untarnished by experience.
+
+Dogs are the best company in the world--I would watch Fido abandoning
+himself to each moment of the day, the victim or the hero of a hundred
+impulses, torn by competing smells and sounds as we are torn by
+overlapping warring emotions and ambitions.
+
+And then he would lie sprawling in front of the fire with a half open
+eye and when you said "Fido" his ears would answer you, taut with
+response, while his tail would beat the floor in indolent happiness. Is
+there anything in life so infectiously joyous as a wagging tail? Worry,
+distress, crossness, all melt at the sight of it--a hypnotic
+conductor's, baton beating the rhythm of triumphant joie de vivre.
+
+Fido was a daily, hourly delight.
+
+I would shut my eyes, to be able to open them suddenly and
+realise--with fresh acuteness--his infinite variety. There was to me
+something poignant about his loveliness like an open rose in whose very
+perfection lies the herald of doom. I loved him too much. The cynical
+masterpieces of the past looking at his beauty smiled in satisfied
+revenge for they knew that he was alive and that life means death. Love
+gives mortality to everything.
+
+Fido grew limp and listless. His nose was hot and dry. He no longer
+trotted about, he wandered from room to room. His eyes were dull. His
+heart bumped about like money in a money-box. With an effort he wagged
+his tail to cheer me up. Wearily he would climb into a chair and lie
+there indifferent to my trembling caresses.
+
+Fido died.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I gave up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted.
+Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like
+tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated
+prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and
+seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a
+creation of the Gods.
+
+If I saw a sheepdog, or a greyhound, a spaniel or a retriever, I would
+avert my eyes, shivering a little as when the hitherto harmless buzzing
+machine reaches the hidden nerve.
+
+"Don't you like dogs?" people would say.
+
+LIKE!
+
+"No!" I would answer.
+
+"How strange. I adore animals."
+
+ADORE!
+
+Oh the verbs of the untouched. And then, in spite of everything, because
+of everything, a Dalmatian once more invaded my life--the life that I
+had so resolutely determined never again to expose to any dog. What is
+invulnerability but a pis-aller? Which of us, given the choice between
+perfect peace and imperfect love would hesitate for one moment?
+
+When Providence gave me Ponto I accepted him with hungry passion, with
+nervous propitiatory prayers to the Gods.
+
+He was a stray dog, masterless and collarless, an erring emigre of
+civilisation and he came to me. At first I did not dare look--my heart
+was beating so fast. I was frightened of being radiant. I was frightened
+of being miserable.
+
+And then I turned to him. He was bigger than Fido, with longer, stronger
+legs. His ears were not quite black, there were two little white spots
+on them, his eyes were not set in pencilled rims. But he was beautiful,
+as beautiful as a Greek athlete--to see him run was to see the Olympic
+games, and in the house he would curl and stretch and tangle up his
+paws, and put his head on my lap and reassure me with his eyes.
+
+Once more I lived with motion made concrete, with beauty made
+absolute--once more a wagging tail brought the inexhaustible dot of
+gaiety.
+
+Ponto had finer manners than Fido. He was maturer, with a deeper sense
+of noblesse oblige. He never forgot that even if he had been born a
+Dalmatian, privilege entails certain obligations.
+
+Perhaps he lacked something of Fido's moody charm, of his frivolous
+pathos, of his absurd joyousness, of his enchanting vanity.
+
+Perhaps it was just Fido's youth that he lacked, and his
+irresponsibility. There was a certain gravity about Ponto--a perfect
+dignity. His fastidiousness had gone beyond the stage of selections, and
+had reached the stage of exclusions. But he never lost his manners, or
+his manner.
+
+Always he said "Good-morning," and "Good-night." If I was embarrassed,
+or worried, he would pretend not to notice it, but if I was happy, or
+sad, he would show his sympathy in a hundred ways--putting his head on
+my lap, or cutting absurd capers to distract my mind.
+
+And then one day I went away.
+
+I told Ponto when I said good-bye to him that it would be some time
+before I saw him again.
+
+How was I to explain partings to him? The monstrous role that geography
+plays in our lives? I just told him that I loved him, that his image was
+in my heart, that our separation was only the preparation of a glorious
+meeting when old-remembered delights would merge into newly discovered
+ones.
+
+He listened to me while I stroked his heavy charmeuse ears. He licked my
+hand, knowing that with my whispering words, I was trying to console
+myself as well as him.
+
+Then I left him quickly.
+
+They wrote to me that he had disappeared.
+
+They wrote to me that his master had reclaimed him.
+
+But I know that he is mine.
+
+For I have made a great discovery.
+
+What I love belongs to me. Not the chairs and tables in my house, but
+the masterpieces of the world.
+
+It is only a question of loving them enough.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Balloons, by Elizabeth Bibesco
+
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