“And they remain women,” Mrs. Thornbury added.  “They give a great deal to their children.”

As she said this she smiled slightly in the direction of Susan and Rachel.  They did not like to be included in the same lot, but they both smiled a little self-consciously, and Arthur and Terence glanced at each other too.  She made them feel that they were all in the same boat together, and they looked at the women they were going to marry and compared them.  It was inexplicable how any one could wish to marry Rachel, incredible that any one should be ready to spend his life with Susan; but singular though the other’s taste must be, they bore each other no ill-will on account of it; indeed, they liked each other rather the better for the eccentricity of their choice.

“I really must congratulate you,” Susan remarked, as she leant across the table for the jam.

There seemed to be no foundation for St. John’s gossip about Arthur and Susan.  Sunburnt and vigorous they sat side by side, with their racquets across their knees, not saying much but smiling slightly all the time.  Through the thin white clothes which they wore, it was possible to see the lines of their bodies and legs, the beautiful curves of their muscles, his leanness and her flesh, and it was natural to think of the firm-fleshed sturdy children that would be theirs.  Their faces had too little shape in them to be beautiful, but they had clear eyes and an appearance of great health and power of endurance, for it seemed as if the blood would never cease to run in his veins, or to lie deeply and calmly in her cheeks.  Their eyes at the present moment were brighter than usual, and wore the peculiar expression of pleasure and self-confidence which is seen in the eyes of athletes, for they had been playing tennis, and they were both first-rate at the game.

Evelyn had not spoken, but she had been looking from Susan to Rachel.  Well—­they had both made up their minds very easily, they had done in a very few weeks what it sometimes seemed to her that she would never be able to do.  Although they were so different, she thought that she could see in each the same look of satisfaction and completion, the same calmness of manner, and the same slowness of movement.  It was that slowness, that confidence, that content which she hated, she thought to herself.  They moved so slowly because they were not single but double, and Susan was attached to Arthur, and Rachel to Terence, and for the sake of this one man they had renounced all other men, and movement, and the real things of life.  Love was all very well, and those snug domestic houses, with the kitchen below and the nursery above, which were so secluded and self-contained, like little islands in the torrents of the world; but the real things were surely the things that happened, the causes, the wars, the ideals, which happened in the great world outside, and went so independently of these women, turning so quietly