“Shall I feel like that in twenty years?” Neville speculated aloud.

“I hope,” said Mrs. Hilary, “that you won’t have lost Rodney.  So long as you have him....”

“But if I haven’t....”

Neville looked down the years; saw herself without Rodney, perhaps looking after her mother, who would then have become (strange, incredible thought, but who could say?) calm with the calm of age; Kay and Gerda married or working or both....  What then?  Only she was better equipped than her mother for the fag end of life; she had a serviceable brain and a sound education.  She wouldn’t pass empty days at a seaside resort.  She would work at something, and be interested.  Interesting work and interesting friends—­her mother, by her very nature, could have neither, but was just clever enough to feel the want of them.  The thing was to start some definite work now, before it was too late.

“Did Grandmama go through it?” Neville asked her mother.

“Oh, I expect so.  I was selfish; I was wrapped up in home and all of you; I didn’t notice.  But I think she had it badly, for a time, when first she left the vicarage....  She’s contented now.”

They both looked at Grandmama, who was playing patience on the sofa and could not hear their talking for the sound of the sea.  Yes, Grandmama was (apparently) contented now.

“There’s work,” mused Neville, thinking of the various links with life, the rafts, rather, which should carry age over the cold seas of tedious regret.  “And there’s natural gaiety.  And intellectual interests.  And contacts with other people—­permanent contacts and temporary ones.  And beauty.  All those things.  For some people, too, there’s religion.”

“And for all of us food and drink,” said Mrs. Hilary, sharply.  “Oh, I suppose you think I’ve no right to complain, as I’ve got all those things, except work.”

But Neville shook her head, knowing that this was a delusion of her mother’s, and that she had, in point of fact, none of them, except the contacts with people, which mostly either over-strained, irritated or bored her, and that aspect of religion which made her cry.  For she was a Unitarian, and thought the Gospels infinitely sad and the souls of the departed most probably so merged in God as to be deprived of all individuality.

“It’s better to be High Church or Roman Catholic and have services, or an Evangelical and have the Voice of God,” Neville decided.  And, indeed, it is probable that Mrs. Hilary would have been one or other of these things if it had not been for her late husband, who had disapproved of superstition and had instructed her in the Higher Thought and the Larger Hope.

3

Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came in the morning, as is apt to happen where there is sea air.  Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had a revulsion to gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament, letters, presents and being made a fuss of.  Also Grandmama said, when she went up to see her after breakfast, “This new dress suits you particularly, my dear child.  It brings out the colour in your eyes,” and everyone likes to hear that when they are sixty-three or any other age.