To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the night.  Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that.  But envy of their chances, of their contacts with life.  Having her own contacts, she wanted all kinds of others too.  Not only Rodney’s, Gerda’s and Kay’s, but those of all her family and friends.  Conscious, as one is on birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove desperately to dam it.  It went too fast.  She looked at the wet strands of black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the black hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up beech trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get rheumatism.  In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the black seas of regret?  One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old and grey and full of sleep—­yes, one went to sleep, when one could.  When one couldn’t, one read.  But one’s eyes got tired soon—­Neville thought of her grandmother—­and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn’t read aloud.  That wouldn’t be enough to stifle vain regrets; only rejoicing actively in the body did that.  So, before that time came, one must have slain regret, crushed that serpent’s head for good and all.

But did anyone ever succeed in doing this?  Rodney, who had his full, successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, with jealousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and troubles of the race that is set before us.  He had done, was doing, something, but it wasn’t enough.  He had got, was getting, far,—­but it wasn’t far enough.  He couldn’t achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles everywhere.  Fools hindered his work; men less capable than he got jobs he should have had.  Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep it at bay than Neville.  Neville had no personal achievements; she had only her love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the queer, enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours (she could beat any of the rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash) and her active but wasted brain.  A good brain, too; she had easily and with brilliance passed her medical examinations long ago—­those of them for which she had had time before she had been interrupted.  But now a wasted brain; squandered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse.  Could she begin to use it now?  Or was she forever held captive, in deep woods, between the two twilights?