The darkness fell, but rose again, and as each day spread widelyover the earth and parted them from the strange day in the forestwhen they had been forced to tell each other what they wanted,this wish of theirs was revealed to other people, and in the processbecame slightly strange to themselves. Apparently it was not anythingunusual that had happened; it was that they had become engagedto marry each other. The world, which consisted for the most partof the hotel and the villa, expressed itself glad on the wholethat two people should marry, and allowed them to see that they werenot expected to take part in the work which has to be done in orderthat the world shall go on, but might absent themselves for a time.

　　They were accordingly left alone until they felt the silence as if,playing in a vast church, the door had been shut on them.

　　They were driven to walk alone, and sit alone, to visit secret placeswhere the flowers had never been picked and the trees were solitary.

　　In solitude they could express those beautiful but too vast desireswhich were so oddly uncomfortable to the ears of other men and women--desires for a world, such as their own world which contained twopeople seemed to them to be, where people knew each other intimatelyand thus judged each other by what was good, and never quarrelled,because that was waste of time.

　　They would talk of such questions among books, or out in the sun,or sitting in the shade of a tree undisturbed. They were nolonger embarrassed, or half-choked with meaning which could notexpress itself; they were not afraid of each other, or, like travellersdown a twisting river, dazzled with sudden beauties when the corneris turned; the unexpected happened, but even the ordinary was lovable,and in many ways preferable to the ecstatic and mysterious,for it was refreshingly solid, and called out effort, and effortunder such circumstances was not effort but delight.

　　While Rachel played the piano, Terence sat near her, engaged,as far as the occasional writing of a word in pencil testified,in shaping the world as it appeared to him now that he and Rachelwere going to be married. It was different certainly. The bookcalled _Silence_ would not now be the same book that it wouldhave been. He would then put down his pencil and stare in frontof him, and wonder in what respects the world was different--it had, perhaps, more solidity, more coherence, more importance,greater depth. Why, even the earth sometimes seemed to him very deep;not carved into hills and cities and fields, but heaped in great masses.

　　He would look out of the window for ten minutes at a time; but no, he didnot care for the earth swept of human beings. He liked human beings--he liked them, he suspected, better than Rachel did. There she was,swaying enthusiastically over her music, quite forgetful of him,--but he liked that quality in her. He liked the impersonalitywhich it produced in her. At last, having written down a seriesof little sentences, with notes of interrogation attached to them,he observed aloud, "'Women--'under the heading Women I've written:

　　"'Not really vainer than men. Lack of self-confidence at the baseof most serious faults. Dislike of own sex traditional, or foundedon fact? Every woman not so much a rake at heart, as an optimist,because they don't think.' What do you say, Rachel?" He pausedwith his pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee.

　　Rachel said nothing. Up and up the steep spiral of a very late Beethovensonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined staircase,energetically at first, then more laboriously advancing her feetwith effort until she could go no higher and returned with a runto begin at the very bottom again.

　　"'Again, it's the fashion now to say that women are more practicaland less idealistic than men, also that they have considerableorganising ability but no sense of honour'--query, what is meantby masculine term, honour?--what corresponds to it in your sex? Eh?"Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglectedthis opportunity of revealing the secrets of her sex.

　　She had, indeed, advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdomthat she allowed these secrets to rest undisturbed; it seemedto be reserved for a later generation to discuss them philosophically.

　　Crashing down a final chord with her left hand, she exclaimed at last,swinging round upon him:

　　"No, Terence, it's no good; here am I, the best musician inSouth America, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can't playa note because of you in the room interrupting me every other second.""You don't seem to realise that that's what I've been aimingat for the last half-hour," he remarked. "I've no objectionto nice simple tunes--indeed, I find them very helpfulto my literary composition, but that kind of thing is merelylike an unfortunate old dog going round on its hind legs in the rain."He began turning over the little sheets of note-paper which werescattered on the table, conveying the congratulations of their friends.

　　"'--all possible wishes for all possible happiness,'" he read;"correct, but not very vivid, are they?""They're sheer nonsense!" Rachel exclaimed. "Think of wordscompared with sounds!" she continued. "Think of novels and playsand histories--" Perched on the edge of the table, she stirredthe red and yellow volumes contemptuously. She seemed to herselfto be in a position where she could despise all human learning.

　　Terence looked at them too.

　　"God, Rachel, you do read trash!" he exclaimed. "And you'rebehind the times too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kindof thing now--antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptionsof life in the east end--oh, no, we've exploded all that.

　　Read poetry, Rachel, poetry, poetry, poetry!"Picking up one of the books, he began to read aloud, his intentionbeing to satirise the short sharp bark of the writer's English;but she paid no attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed:

　　"Does it ever seem to you, Terence, that the world is composedentirely of vast blocks of matter, and that we're nothing butpatches of light--" she looked at the soft spots of sun waveringover the carpet and up the wall--"like that?""No," said Terence, "I feel solid; immensely solid; the legs of mychair might be rooted in the bowels of the earth. But at Cambridge,I can remember, there were times when one fell into ridiculous statesof semi-coma about five o'clock in the morning. Hirst does now,I expect--oh, no, Hirst wouldn't."Rachel continued, "The day your note came, asking us to go onthe picnic, I was sitting where you're sitting now, thinking that;I wonder if I could think that again? I wonder if the world's changed?

　　and if so, when it'll stop changing, and which is the real world?""When I first saw you," he began, "I thought you were like acreature who'd lived all its life among pearls and old bones.

　　Your hands were wet, d'you remember, and you never said a word untilI gave you a bit of bread, and then you said, 'Human Beings!'""And I thought you--a prig," she recollected. "No; that's not quite it.

　　There were the ants who stole the tongue, and I thought you andSt. John were like those ants--very big, very ugly, very energetic,with all your virtues on your backs. However, when I talked to youI liked you--""You fell in love with me," he corrected her. "You were in lovewith me all the time, only you didn't know it.""No, I never fell in love with you," she asserted.

　　"Rachel--what a lie--didn't you sit here looking at my window--didn't you wander about the hotel like an owl in the sun--?""No," she repeated, "I never fell in love, if falling in loveis what people say it is, and it's the world that tells the liesand I tell the truth. Oh, what lies--what lies!"She crumpled together a handful of letters from Evelyn M., fromMr. Pepper, from Mrs. Thornbury and Miss Allan, and Susan Warrington.

　　It was strange, considering how very different these people were,that they used almost the same sentences when they wrote tocongratulate her upon her engagement.

　　That any one of these people had ever felt what she felt, or couldever feel it, or had even the right to pretend for a single secondthat they were capable of feeling it, appalled her much as the churchservice had done, much as the face of the hospital nurse had done;and if they didn't feel a thing why did they go and pretend to?

　　The simplicity and arrogance and hardness of her youth, now concentratedinto a single spark as it was by her love of him, puzzled Terence;being engaged had not that effect on him; the world was different,but not in that way; he still wanted the things he had always wanted,and in particular he wanted the companionship of other peoplemore than ever perhaps. He took the letters out of her hand,and protested:

　　"Of course they're absurd, Rachel; of course they say things justbecause other people say them, but even so, what a nice woman MissAllan is; you can't deny that; and Mrs. Thornbury too; she's gottoo many children I grant you, but if half-a-dozen of them had goneto the bad instead of rising infallibly to the tops of their trees--hasn't she a kind of beauty--of elemental simplicity as Flushingwould say? Isn't she rather like a large old tree murmuringin the moonlight, or a river going on and on and on? By the way,Ralph's been made governor of the Carroway Islands--the youngestgovernor in the service; very good, isn't it?"But Rachel was at present unable to conceive that the vast majorityof the affairs of the world went on unconnected by a single threadwith her own destiny.

　　"I won't have eleven children," she asserted; "I won't have the eyesof an old woman. She looks at one up and down, up and down,as if one were a horse.""We must have a son and we must have a daughter," said Terence,putting down the letters, "because, let alone the inestimableadvantage of being our children, they'd be so well brought up."They went on to sketch an outline of the ideal education--how their daughter should be required from infancy to gaze at a largesquare of cardboard painted blue, to suggest thoughts of infinity,for women were grown too practical; and their son--he should be taughtto laugh at great men, that is, at distinguished successful men,at men who wore ribands and rose to the tops of their trees.

　　He should in no way resemble (Rachel added) St. John Hirst.

　　At this Terence professed the greatest admiration for St. John Hirst.

　　Dwelling upon his good qualities he became seriously convinced of them;he had a mind like a torpedo, he declared, aimed at falsehood.

　　Where should we all be without him and his like? Choked in weeds;Christians, bigots,--why, Rachel herself, would be a slave with a fanto sing songs to men when they felt drowsy.

　　"But you'll never see it!" he exclaimed; "because with all your virtuesyou don't, and you never will, care with every fibre of your beingfor the pursuit of truth! You've no respect for facts, Rachel;you're essentially feminine." She did not trouble to deny it,nor did she think good to produce the one unanswerable argumentagainst the merits which Terence admired. St. John Hirst saidthat she was in love with him; she would never forgive that;but the argument was not one to appeal to a man.

　　"But I like him," she said, and she thought to herself that she alsopitied him, as one pities those unfortunate people who are outside the warmmysterious globe full of changes and miracles in which we ourselvesmove about; she thought that it must be very dull to be St. John Hirst.

　　She summed up what she felt about him by saying that she wouldnot kiss him supposing he wished it, which was not likely.

　　As if some apology were due to Hirst for the kiss which she thenbestowed upon him, Terence protested:

　　"And compared with Hirst I'm a perfect Zany."The clock here struck twelve instead of eleven.

　　"We're wasting the morning--I ought to be writing my book, and youought to be answering these.""We've only got twenty-one whole mornings left," said Rachel.

　　"And my father'll be here in a day or two."However, she drew a pen and paper towards her and began to write laboriously,"My dear Evelyn--"Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which some one else had written,a process which he found essential to the composition of his own.

　　For a considerable time nothing was to be heard but the tickingof the clock and the fitful scratch of Rachel's pen, as she producedphrases which bore a considerable likeness to those which shehad condemned. She was struck by it herself, for she stopped writingand looked up; looked at Terence deep in the arm-chair, lookedat the different pieces of furniture, at her bed in the corner,at the window-pane which showed the branches of a tree filledin with sky, heard the clock ticking, and was amazed at the gulfwhich lay between all that and her sheet of paper. Would thereever be a time when the world was one and indivisible? Even withTerence himself--how far apart they could be, how little she knewwhat was passing in his brain now! She then finished her sentence,which was awkward and ugly, and stated that they were "both very happy,and going to be married in the autumn probably and hope to livein London, where we hope you will come and see us when we get back."Choosing "affectionately," after some further speculation,rather than sincerely, she signed the letter and was doggedlybeginning on another when Terence remarked, quoting from his book:

　　"Listen to this, Rachel. 'It is probable that Hugh' (he's the hero,a literary man), 'had not realised at the time of his marriage,any more than the young man of parts and imagination usuallydoes realise, the nature of the gulf which separates the needsand desires of the male from the needs and desires of the female.

　　. . . At first they had been very happy. The walking tour in Switzerlandhad been a time of jolly companionship and stimulating revelationsfor both of them. Betty had proved herself the ideal comrade.

　　. . . They had shouted _Love_ _in_ _the_ _Valley_ to each other acrossthe snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn' (and so on, and so on--I'll skipthe descriptions). . . . 'But in London, after the boy's birth,all was changed. Betty was an admirable mother; but it did nottake her long to find out that motherhood, as that function isunderstood by the mother of the upper middle classes, did not absorbthe whole of her energies. She was young and strong, with healthylimbs and a body and brain that called urgently for exercise.

　　. . .' (In short she began to give tea-parties.) . . . 'Comingin late from this singular t............