“Often it’s like a cold douche of water down my spine, the thought of it.  I reason and mock at myself, but I don’t like it....  You’re different; finer, more real, more unselfish.  Besides, you’ll have done something worth doing when you have to give up.  I shan’t.”

Pamela’s brows went up.

“Kay?  Gerda?  The pretty dears:  I’ve done nothing so nice as them.  You’ve done what’s called a woman’s work in the world—­isn’t that the phrase?”

“Done it—­just so, but so long ago.  What now?  I still feel young, Pamela, even now that I know I’m not. ...  Oh Lord, it’s a queer thing, being a woman.  A well-off woman of forty-three with everything made comfortable for her and her brain gone to pot and her work in the world done.  I want something to bite my teeth into—­some solid, permanent job—­and I get nothing but sweetmeats, and people point at Kay and Gerda and say ’That’s your work, and it’s over.  Now you can rest, seeing that it’s good, like God on the seventh day.’”

“I don’t say ’Now you can rest.  Except just now, while you’re run down.’”

“Run down, yes; run down like a disordered clock because I tried to tackle an honest job of work again.  Isn’t it sickening, Pamela?  Isn’t it ludicrous?”

“Ludicrous—­no.  Everyone comes up against his own limitations.  You’ve got to work within them that’s all.  After all, there are plenty of jobs you can do that want doing—­simply shouting to be done.”

“Pammie dear, it’s worse than I’ve said.  I’m a low creature.  I don’t only want to do jobs that want doing:  I want to count, to make a name.  I’m damnably ambitious.  You’ll despise that, of course—­and you’re quite right, it is despicable.  But there it is.  Most men and many women are tormented by it—­they itch for recognition.”

“Of course.  One is.”

“You too, Pammie?”

“I have been.  Less now.  Life gets to look short, when you’re thirty-nine.”

“Ah, but you have it—­recognition, even fame, in the world you work in.  You count for something.  If you value it, there it is.  I wouldn’t grumble if I’d played your part in the piece.  It’s a good part—­a useful part and a speaking part.”

“I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play someone else’s part for a change.  There’s nothing exciting about mine.  Most people would far prefer yours.”

They would, of course; Neville knew it.  The happy political wife rather than the unmarried woman worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather than Frances Carr.  There was no question which was the happier lot, the fuller, the richer, the easier, the more entertaining.

“Ah well....  You see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and I felt suddenly that it wasn’t for me to be stuck up about her—­what am I too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning them?  It made me shudder.  Hence this fit of blues.  The pampered, lazy, brainless animal—­it is such a terrific sight when in human form.  Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela.  In her horrible way—­you know.  Hinting that she isn’t alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley.”