he’d be frightfully sick if he had to stand by and see other people working and getting on and in the thick of things when he wasn’t.  He couldn’t bear it; he’d take to drink, I think....  I hope Rodney won’t ever have a nervous breakdown and feel like this, poor darling, he’d be dreadfully tiresome....  Not to work after all.  Not to be a doctor....  What then?  Just go about among people, grinning like a dog.  Winter in town, talking, dining, being the political wife.  Summer in the country, walking, riding, reading, playing tennis.  Fun, of course.  But what’s it all for?  When I’ve got Gerda off my hands I shall have done being a mother, in any sense that matters.  Is being a wife enough to live for?  Rodney’s wife?  Oh, I want to be some use, want to do things, to count....  And Rodney will die some time—­I know he’ll die first—­and then I shan’t even be a wife.  And in twenty years I shan’t be able to do things with my body much more, and what then?  What will be left? ...  I think I’m getting hysterical, like poor mother....  How ugly I look, these days.”

She stopped before the looking-glass.  Her face looked back at her, white and thin, almost haggard, traced in the last few weeks for the first time with definite lines round brow and mouth.  Her dark hair was newly streaked with grey.

“Middle age,” said Neville, and a cold hand was laid round her heart.  “It had to come some time, and this illness has opened the door to it.  Or shall I look young again when I’m quite well?  No, never young again.”

She shivered.

“I look like mother to-day....  I am like mother....”

So youth and beauty were to leave her, too.  She would recover from this illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for long.  Middle age had begun.  She would have off days in future, when she would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming.  She wouldn’t, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn’t be sure to think “A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish.”  Soon they would be saying “How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look,” and then “She was a pretty woman once.”

Well, looks didn’t matter much really, after all....

“They do, they do,” cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful.  “If you’re vain they do—­and I am vain.  Vain of my mind and of my body....  Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall be hurt.”

Looks did matter.  It was no use canting, and minimising them.  They affected the thing that mattered most—­one’s relations with people.  Men, for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them.  They liked pretty girls, and pretty women.  Interesting men cared to talk to them:  they told them things they would never tell a plain woman.  Rodney did.  He liked attractive women.  Sometimes he made love to them, prettily and harmlessly.