“It’s no use, Jimmy.  My head’s hopeless this afternoon.  Another time.”

He shut the book.

“Yes.  So it seems....  You’re overdoing it, Neville.  You can’t go on like this.”

She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly.

“But I must go on like this if I’m ever going to get through my exams.”

“You’re not going to, old thing.  You’re quite obviously unfitted to.  It’s not your job any more.  It’s absurd to try; really it is.”

Neville shut her eyes.

“Doctors ... doctors.  They have it on the brain,—­the limitations of the feminine organism.”

“Because they know something about it.  But I’m not speaking of the feminine organism just now.  I should say the same to Rodney if he thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics.”

“Rodney never could have been a doctor.  He hates messing about with bodies.”

“Well, you know what I think.  I can’t stop you, of course.  It’s only a question of time, in any case.  You’ll soon find out for yourself that it’s no use.”

“I think,” she answered, in her small, unemotional voice, “that it’s exceedingly probable that I shall.”

She lay inertly in the deep chair, her eyes shut, her hands opened, palms downwards, as if they had failed to hold something.

“What then, Jim?  If I can’t be a doctor what can I be?  Besides Rodney’s wife, I mean?  I don’t say besides the children’s mother, because that’s stopped being a job.  They’re charming to me, the darlings, but they don’t need me any more; they go their own way.”

Jim had noticed that.

“Well, after all, you do a certain amount of political work—­public speaking, meetings, and so on.  Isn’t that enough?”

“That’s all second-hand.  I shouldn’t do it but for Rodney.  I’m not public-spirited enough.  If Rodney dies before I do, I shan’t go on with that....  Shall I just be a silly, self-engrossed, moping old woman, no use to anyone and a plague to myself?”

The eyes of both of them strayed out to the garden.

“Who’s the silly moping old woman?” asked Mrs. Hilary’s voice in the doorway.  And there she stood, leaning a little forward, a strained smile on her face.

“Me, mother, when I shall be old,” Neville quickly answered her, smiling in return.  “Come in, dear.  Jim’s telling me how I shall never be a doctor.  He gave me a viva voce exam., and I came a mucker over it.”

Her voice had an edge of bitterness; she hadn’t liked coming a mucker, nor yet being told she couldn’t get through exams.  She had plenty of vanity; so far everyone and everything had combined to spoil her.  She was determined, in the face of growing doubt, to prove Jim wrong yet.

“Well,” Mrs. Hilary said, sitting down on the edge of a chair, not settling herself, but looking poised to go, so as not to seem to intrude on their conversation, “well, I don’t see why you want to be a doctor, dear.  Everyone knows women doctors aren’t much good. I wouldn’t trust one.”