Hewet and Rachel had long ago reached the particular place onthe edge of the cliff where, looking down into the sea, you mightchance on jelly-fish and dolphins. Looking the other way, the vastexpanse of land gave them a sensation which is given by no view,however extended, in England; the villages and the hills therehaving names, and the farthest horizon of hills as often as notdipping and showing a line of mist which is the sea; here the viewwas one of infinite sun-dried earth, earth pointed in pinnacles,heaped in vast barriers, earth widening and spreading away and awaylike the immense floor of the sea, earth chequered by day and by night,and partitioned into different lands, where famous cities were founded,and the races of men changed from dark savages to white civilised men,and back to dark savages again. Perhaps their English bloodmade this prospect uncomfortably impersonal and hostile to them,for having once turned their faces that way they next turned themto the sea, and for the rest of the time sat looking at the sea.

　　The sea, though it was a thin and sparkling water here, which seemedincapable of surge or anger, eventually narrowed itself, clouded itspure tint with grey, and swirled through narrow channels and dashedin a shiver of broken waters against massive granite rocks.

　　It was this sea that flowed up to the mouth of the Thames;and the Thames washed the roots of the city of London.

　　Hewet's thoughts had followed some such course as this, for thefirst thing he said as they stood on the edge of the cliff was--"I'd like to be in England!"Rachel lay down on her elbow, and parted the tall grasses which grewon the edge, so that she might have a clear view. The water wasvery calm; rocking up and down at the base of the cliff, and so clearthat one could see the red of the stones at the bottom of it.

　　So it had been at the birth of the world, and so it had remainedever since. Probably no human being had ever broken that waterwith boat or with body. Obeying some impulse, she determined to marthat eternity of peace, and threw the largest pebble she could find.

　　It struck the water, and the ripples spread out and out.

　　Hewet looked down too.

　　"It's wonderful," he said, as they widened and ceased. The freshnessand the newness seemed to him wonderful. He threw a pebble next.

　　There was scarcely any sound.

　　"But England," Rachel murmured in the absorbed tone of one whose eyesare concentrated upon some sight. "What d'you want with England?""My friends chiefly," he said, "and all the things one does."He could look at Rachel without her noticing it. She was stillabsorbed in the water and the exquisitely pleasant sensationswhich a little depth of the sea washing over rocks suggests.

　　He noticed that she was wearing a dress of deep blue colour, made ofa soft thin cotton stuff, which clung to the shape of her body.

　　It was a body with the angles and hollows of a young woman's bodynot yet developed, but in no way distorted, and thus interestingand even lovable. Raising his eyes Hewet observed her head;she had taken her hat off, and the face rested on her hand.

　　As she looked down into the sea, her lips were slightly parted.

　　The expression was one of childlike intentness, as if she werewatching for a fish to swim past over the clear red rocks.

　　Nevertheless her twenty-four years of life had given her a lookof reserve. Her hand, which lay on the ground, the fingers curlingslightly in, was well shaped and competent; the square-tippedand nervous fingers were the fingers of a musician. With somethinglike anguish Hewet realised that, far from being unattractive,her body was very attractive to him. She looked up suddenly.

　　Her eyes were full of eagerness and interest.

　　"You write novels?" she asked.

　　For the moment he could not think what he was saying. He wasovercome with the desire to hold her in his arms.

　　"Oh yes," he said. "That is, I want to write them."She would not take her large grey eyes off his face.

　　"Novels," she repeated. "Why do you write novels? You oughtto write music. Music, you see"--she shifted her eyes, and becameless desirable as her brain began to work, inflicting a certainchange upon her face--"music goes straight for things. It saysall there is to say at once. With writing it seems to me there'sso much"--she paused for an expression, and rubbed her fingersin the earth--"scratching on the matchbox. Most of the time when Iwas reading Gibbon this afternoon I was horribly, oh infernally,damnably bored!" She gave a shake of laughter, looking at Hewet,who laughed too.

　　"_I_ shan't lend you books," he remarked.

　　"Why is it," Rachel continued, "that I can laugh at Mr. Hirstto you, but not to his face? At tea I was completely overwhelmed,not by his ugliness--by his mind." She enclosed a circle in the airwith her hands. She realised with a great sense of comfort whoeasily she could talk to Hewet, those thorns or ragged cornerswhich tear the surface of some relationships being smoothed away.

　　"So I observed," said Hewet. "That's a thing that never ceasesto amaze me." He had recovered his composure to such an extentthat he could light and smoke a cigarette, and feeling her ease,became happy and easy himself.

　　"The respect that women, even well-educated, very able women,have for men," he went on. "I believe we must have the sort of powerover you that we're said to have over horses. They see us three timesas big as we are or they'd never obey us. For that very reason,I'm inclined to doubt that you'll ever do anything even when youhave the vote." He looked at her reflectively. She appeared verysmooth and sensitive and young. "It'll take at least six generationsbefore you're sufficiently thick-skinned to go into law courtsand business offices. Consider what a bully the ordinary man is,"he continued, "the ordinary hard-working, rather ambitious solicitoror man of business with a family to bring up and a certain positionto maintain. And then, of course, the daughters have to give wayto the sons; the sons have to be educated; they have to bully andshove for their wives and families, and so it all comes over again.

　　And meanwhile there are the women in the background. . . . Do youreally think that the vote will do you any good?""The vote?" Rachel repeated. She had to visualise it as a littlebit of paper which she dropped into a box before she understoodhis question, and looking at each other they smiled at somethingabsurd in the question.

　　"Not to me," she said. "But I play the piano. . . . Are men reallylike that?" she asked, returning to the question that interested her.

　　"I'm not afraid of you." She looked at him easily.

　　"Oh, I'm different," Hewet replied. "I've got between six and sevenhundred a year of my own. And then no one takes a novelist seriously,thank heavens. There's no doubt it helps to make up for the drudgeryof a profession if a man's taken very, very seriously by every one--if he gets appointments, and has offices and a title, and lotsof letters after his name, and bits of ribbon and degrees.

　　I don't grudge it 'em, though sometimes it comes over me--what anamazing concoction! What a miracle the masculine conception oflife is--judges, civil servants, army, navy, Houses of Parliament,lord mayors--what a world we've made of it! Look at Hirst now.

　　I assure you," he said, "not a day's passed since we came here withouta discussion as to whether he's to stay on at Cambridge or to goto the Bar. It's his career--his sacred career. And if I'veheard it twenty times, I'm sure his mother and sister have heardit five hundred times. Can't you imagine the family conclaves,and the sister told to run out and feed the rabbits because St. Johnmust have the school-room to himself--'St. John's working,' 'St. Johnwants his tea brought to him.' Don't you know the kind of thing?

　　No wonder that St. John thinks it a matter of considerable importance.

　　It is too. He has to earn his living. But St. John's sister--"Hewet puffed in silence. "No one takes her seriously, poor dear.

　　She feeds the rabbits.""Yes," said Rachel. "I've fed rabbits for twenty-four years; it seemsodd now." She looked meditative, and Hewet, who had been talkingmuch at random and instinctively adopting the feminine point of view,saw that she would now talk about herself, which was what he wanted,for so they might come to know each other.

　　She looked back meditatively upon her past life.

　　"How do you spend your day?" he asked.

　　She meditated still. When she thought of their day it seemedto her it was cut into four pieces by their meals. These divisionswere absolutely rigid, the contents of the day having to accommodatethemselves within the four rigid bars. Looking back at her life,that was what she saw.

　　"Breakfast nine; luncheon one; tea five; dinner eight," she said.

　　"Well," said Hewet, "what d'you do in the morning?""I need to play the piano for hours and hours.""And after luncheon?""Then I went shopping with one of my aunts. Or we went to see some one,or we took a message; or we did something that had to be done--the taps might be leaking. They visit the poor a good deal--old char-women with bad legs, women who want tickets for hospitals.

　　Or I used to walk in the park by myself. And after tea peoplesometimes called; or in summer we sat in the garden or played croquet;in winter I read aloud, while they worked; after dinner I playedthe piano and they wrote letters. If father was at home we had friendsof his to dinner, and about once a month we went up to the play.

　　Every now and then we dined out; sometimes I went to a dancein London, but that was difficult because of getting back.

　　The people we saw were old family friends, and relations, but wedidn't see many people. There was the clergyman, Mr. Pepper,and the Hunts. Father generally wanted to be quiet when hecame home, because he works very hard at Hull. Also my aunts aren'tvery strong. A house takes up a lot of time if you do it properly.

　　Our servants were always bad, and so Aunt Lucy used to do a good dealin the kitchen, and Aunt Clara, I think, spent most of the morningdusting the drawing-room and going through the linen and silver.

　　Then there were the dogs. They had to be exercised, besides beingwashed and brushed. Now Sandy's dead, but Aunt Clara has a veryold cockatoo that came from India. Everything in our house,"she exclaimed, "comes from somewhere! It's full of old furniture,not really old, Victorian, things mother's family had or father'sfamily had, which they didn't like to get rid of, I suppose,though we've really no room for them. It's rather a nice house,"she continued, "except that it's a little dingy--dull I should say."She called up before her eyes a vision of the drawing-room at home;it was a large oblong room, with a square window opening on the garden.

　　Green plush chairs stood against the wall; there was a heavy carvedbook-case, with glass doors, and a general impression of fadedsofa covers, large spaces of pale green, and baskets with piecesof wool-work dropping out of them. Photographs from old Italianmasterpieces hung on the walls, and views of Venetian bridges andSwedish waterfalls which members of the family had seen years ago.

　　There were also one or two portraits of fathers and grandmothers,and an engraving of John Stuart Mill, after the picture by Watts.

　　It was a room without definite character, being neither typicallyand openly hideous, nor strenuously artistic, nor really comfortable.

　　Rachel roused herself from the contemplation of this familiarpicture.

　　"But this isn't very interesting for you," she said, looking up.

　　"Good Lord!" Hewet exclaimed. "I've never been so much interestedin my life." She then realised that while she had been thinkingof Richmond, his eyes had never left her face. The knowledgeof this excited her.

　　"Go on, please go on," he urged. "Let's imagine it's a Wednesday.

　　You're all at luncheon. You sit there, and Aunt Lucy there,and Aunt Clara here"; he arranged three pebbles on the grassbetween them.

　　"Aunt Clara carves the neck of lamb," Rachel continued.

　　She fixed her gaze upon the pebbles. "There's a very ugly yellowchina stand in front of me, called a dumb waiter, on which arethree dishes, one for biscuits, one for butter, and one for cheese.

　　There's a pot of ferns. Then there's Blanche the maid, who snufflesbecause of her nose. We talk--oh yes, it's Aunt Lucy's afternoonat Walworth, so we're rather quick over luncheon. She goes off.

　　She has a purple bag, and a black notebook. Aunt Clara haswhat they call a G.F.S. meeting in the drawing-room on Wednesday,so I take the dogs out. I go up Richmond Hill, along the terrace,into the park. It's the 18th of April--the same day as it is here.

　　It's spring in England. The ground is rather damp. However, I crossthe road and get on to the grass and we walk along, and I singas I always do when I'm alone, until we come to the open placewhere you can see the whole of London beneath you on a clear day.

　　Hampstead Church spire there, Westminster Cathedral over there,and factory chimneys about here. There's generally a haze over the lowparts of London; but it's often blue over the park when London'sin a mist. It's the open place that the balloons cross going overto Hurlingham. They're pale yellow. Well, then, it smells very good,particularly if they happen to be burning wood in the keeper's lodgewhich is there. I could tell you now how to get from place to place,and exactly what trees you'd pass, and where you'd cross the roads.

　　You see, I played there when I was small. Spring is good, but it'sbest in the autumn when the deer are barking; then it gets dusky,and I go back through the streets, and you can't see people properly;they come past very quick, you just see their faces and thenthey're gone--that's what I like--and no one knows in the least whatyou're doing--""But you have to be back for tea, I suppose?" Hewet checked her.

　　"Tea? Oh yes. Five o'clock. Then I say what I've done, and myaunts say what they've done, and perhaps some one comes in:

　　Mrs. Hunt, let's suppose. She's an old lady with a lame leg.

　　She has or she once had eight children; so we ask after them.

　　They're all over the world; so we ask where they are, and sometimesthey're ill, or they're stationed in a cholera district, or insome place where it only rains once in five months. Mrs. Hunt,"she said with a smile, "had a son who was hugged to death bya bear."Here she stopped and looked at Hewet to see whether he was amusedby the same things that amused her. She was reassured. But shethought it necessary to apologise again; she had been talking too much.

　　"You can't conceive how it interests me," he said.

　　Indeed, his cigarette had gone out, and he had to light another.

　　"Why does it interest you?" she asked.

　　"Partly because you're a woman," he replied. When he said this,Rachel, who had become oblivious of anything, and had reverted to achildlike state of interest and pleasure, lost her freedom and becameself-conscious. She felt herself at once singular and under observation,as she felt with St. John Hirst. She was about to launch into an argumentwhich would have made them both feel bitterly against each other,and to define sensations which had no such importance as wordswere bound to give them when Hewet led her thoughts in a different direction.

　　"I've often walked along the streets where people live all in a row,and one house is exactly like another house, and wondered what onearth the women were doing inside," he said. "Just consider:

　　it's the beginning of the twentieth century, and until a few yearsago no woman had ever come out by herself and said things at all.

　　There it was going on in the background, for all those thousandsof years, this curious silent unrepresented life. Of course we'realway............