To my Mother driving gaily through the adventurous Middle Years...

“As to that,” said Mr. Cradock, “we may say that all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life we live.” “Reflecting how, at the best, human life on this minute and perishing planet is ...

Neville, at five o’clock (Nature’s time, not man’s) on the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the mul...

Neville, at five o’clock (Nature’s time, not man’s) on the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the mul...

The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda and of Kay, shrilled down from the garden, and Esau yapped in answer. They were calling her. They had probably been to wake her and had found her gone....

Neville ran upstairs, and came down to breakfast dressed in blue cotton, with her damp hair smoothly taken back from her broad forehead that jutted broodingly over her short pointed face. She had the ...

Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come down from town to see Neville on her forty-third birthday. Nan herself was not so incredibly old as Neville; (for forty-three is incredibly old, from any...

They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary’s Bay, in time for lunch on Mrs. Hilary’s birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she p...

They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary’s Bay, in time for lunch on Mrs. Hilary’s birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she p...

All but Neville arrived by the same train from town, the one getting in at 12:11. Neville had come from Surrey the day before and spent the night, because Mrs. Hilary liked to have her all to herself ...

Though heaviness endured for the night, joy came in the morning, as is apt to happen where there is sea air. Mrs. Hilary on her birthday had a revulsion to gaiety, owing to a fine day, her unstable te...

“What about a bathe?” Neville suggested to all of them. “Mother?” Mrs. Hilary, a keen bather, agreed. They all agreed except Grandmama, who was going out in her donkey chair instead, as one does at ei...

Grandmama, waiting for them on the esplanade, was angry with Mrs. Hilary. “My dear child, didn’t you hear me call? You’re perfectly blue. You know you never stay in more than five minutes. Neville, yo...

Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing of the sea; Neville’s, sweet and light, with pretty cadences, Pamela’s, crisp, quick and decided, Nan’s, trailing a little, almost drawling someti...

Neville meanwhile was saying to Grandmama in the drawing-room at The Gulls, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed, “I wish mother could get some regular interest or occupation. She would be much happier. ...

When Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama were both settled for the night (old and elderly people settle for the night⁠—other people go to bed) Neville went down to the seashore and lay on the sand, watching the...

If you have broken off your medical studies at London University at the age of twenty-one and resume them at forty-three, you will find them (one is told) a considerably tougher job than you found the...

If you have broken off your medical studies at London University at the age of twenty-one and resume them at forty-three, you will find them (one is told) a considerably tougher job than you found the...

She envied Kay and Gerda, as they all three lay and worked in the garden, with chocolates, cigarettes and Esau grouped comfortably round them. Kay was reading economics for his Tripos, Gerda was drawi...

Nan came down in July to stay with them. While she was there, Barry Briscoe, who was helping with a W.E.A. summer school at Haslemere, would come over on Sundays and spend the day with them. Not even ...

Mrs. Hilary and Grandmama came to Windover. Mrs. Hilary would rather have come without Grandmama, but Grandmama enjoyed the jaunt, as she called it. For eighty-four, Grandmama was wonderfully sporting...

“This Barry Briscoe,” said Mrs. Hilary to Neville after lunch, as she watched Nan and he start off for a walk together. “I suppose he’s in love with her?” “I suppose so. Something of the kind, anyhow....

Grandmama, settled in her special chair, remarked on the unusual (for July) fineness of the day, and requested Neville to read them the chief items of news in the Observer, which she had brought out w...

Mrs. Hilary, abruptly leaving them, trailed away by herself to the house. Since she mightn’t have Neville to herself for the afternoon she wouldn’t stay and share her. But when she reached the house a...

Gerda, going up to Mrs. Hilary’s room to tell her about tea, found her asleep on the sofa, with The Breath of Life fallen open from her hand. A smile flickered on Gerda’s delicate mouth, for she had h...

It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a Care Committee meeting, fitted her latchkey into the door of the rooms in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let he...

It was a Monday evening, late in July. Pamela Hilary, returning from a Care Committee meeting, fitted her latchkey into the door of the rooms in Cow Lane which she shared with Frances Carr, and let he...

Nan came into the room, her dark eyes blinking against the gaslight, her small round face pale and smutty. She bent to kiss Pamela, then curled herself up in a wicker chair and yawned. “The night is d...

Off went Nan on the bus at the corner, whistling softly into the night. Like a bird her heart rose up and sang, at the lit pageant of London swinging by. Queer, fantastic, most lovely life! Sordid, sq...

“Complexes,” read Mrs. Hilary, “are of all sorts and sizes.” And there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that w...

“Complexes,” read Mrs. Hilary, “are of all sorts and sizes.” And there was a picture of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that w...

She tried Barry Briscoe, the weekend he came down and found Nan gone. Barry Briscoe was by way of being interested in people and things in general; he had that kind of alert mind and face. He came up ...

Mrs. Hilary was up in town by herself for a day’s shopping. The sales were on at Barker’s and Derry and Tom’s. Mrs. Hilary wandered about these shops, and even Ponting’s and bought little bags, and pr...

At four o’clock on Thursday afternoon Rosalind went upstairs and put on an extra coating of powder and rouge. She also blackened her eyelashes and put on her lips salve the colour of strawberries rath...

She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous creature! Lying about Gilbert’s clever, nervous, eager l...

The psychoanalyst doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote something she tried to see and couldn’t. She came to the...

The psychoanalyst doctor was little and dark and while he was talking he looked not at Mrs. Hilary but down at a paper whereon he drew or wrote something she tried to see and couldn’t. She came to the...

Windover too was illumined. She could watch almost calmly Neville talking to Grandmama, wheeling her round the garden to look at the borders, for Grandmama was a great gardener. Then Jim came down for...

Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book befo...

It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even in the July of 1920. Today after lunch Barry said “I...

It rained so hard, so much harder even than usual, that Sunday, that only Barry and Gerda went to walk. Barry walked in every kind of weather, even in the July of 1920. Today after lunch Barry said “I...

They tramped along, waterproofed and bareheaded, down the sandy road. The rain swished in Gerda’s golden locks, till they clung dank and limp about her cheeks and neck; it beat on Barry’s glasses, so ...

They all sat round the tea-table, and most of them were warm and sleepy from Sunday afternoon by the fire, but Barry and Gerda were warm and tingling from walking in the storm. Some people prefer one ...

Barry in the office was quick, alert, cheerful, and businesslike, and very decided, sometimes impatient. Efficient: that was the word. He would skim the correspondence and dictate answers out of his h...

A clever, strange, charming child Barry found her, old and young beyond her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, delib...

Gerda went home only for weekends now; it was too slow a journey to make every morning and evening. She stayed during the week at a hotel called the Red House, in Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street. It...

But, though these were Gerda’s own people, the circle in which she felt at home, she looked forward every night to the morning, when there would be the office again, and Barry. Sometimes Barry took he...

Next morning at the office Barry said he had heard from Nan. She had asked him to come too and bicycle in Cornwall, with her and Gerda and Kay. “You will, won’t you,” said Gerda. “Rather, of course.” ...

Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book. She had a room at St. Michael’s Café, at the edge of the little town, just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, a...

Nan at Marazion bathed, sailed, climbed, walked and finished her book. She had a room at St. Michael’s Café, at the edge of the little town, just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, a...

Meanwhile she wrote the last chapters of her book, sitting on the beach among drying nets and boats, in some fishing cove up the coast. The Newlyn shore she did not like, because the artist-spoilt chi...

Echoes of the great little world so far off came to the Cornish coasts, through the Western Mercury and the stray, belated London papers. Rumours of a projected coal strike, of fighting in Mesopotamia...

Nan met them at Penzance station. The happy three; they would be good to make holiday with. Already they had holiday faces, though not yet browned like Nan’s. Barry’s hand gripped Nan’s. He was here t...

It was a merry, rowdy meal they had; ham and eggs and coffee in an upper room, with the soft sea air blowing in on them through open windows. Nan and Barry chattered, and Kay took his cheerful part; o...

The coast road to Land’s End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path ...

The coast road to Land’s End is like a switchback. You climb a mountain and are flung down to sea level like a shooting star, and climb a mountain again. Sometimes the road becomes a sandy cliff path ...

Next morning they took the road eastward. They were going to ride along the coast to Talland Bay, where they were going to spend a week. They were giving themselves a week to get there, which would al...

On the road it was the same. Nan, with only the faintest, if any application of brakes, would commit herself to lanes which leaped precipitously downwards like mountain streams, zigzagging like a dog’...

After that the game began in earnest. Nan, from being casually and unconsciously reckless, became deliberately daredevil and always with a backward, ironic look for Gerda, as if she said “How about it...

Nan, experienced in such things, as one is at the age of thirty-three if one has led a well-spent life, knew now beyond peradventure what had happened to Barry and what would never happen again betwee...

The long strange days slid by like many-coloured dreams. The steep tumbling roads tilted behind them, with their pale, old, white and slate hamlets huddled between fields above a rockbound sea. Someti...

It was three days later. They had spent an afternoon and a night at Polperro, and the sun shone in the morning on that incredible place as they rode out of it after breakfast. Polperro shakes the soul...

Nan, far ahead, nearly on the level, heard the crash and heard voices crying out. Jamming on her brakes she jumped off; looked back up the precipitous path; saw nothing but its windings. She left her ...

Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda’s head from the sun. There was nothing more to be done than that; there was no water, even, to bathe the cut with. “Nan.” “Yes?” “Am...

Voices and steps. Barry and a doctor, Barry and a stretcher, Barry and all kinds of help. Barry’s anxious eyes and smile. “Well? How’s she been?” He was on his knees beside her. “Here’s the doctor, da...

Through the late September and October days Gerda would lie on a wicker couch in the conservatory at Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken wrist on a splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and...

Through the late September and October days Gerda would lie on a wicker couch in the conservatory at Windover, her sprained leg up, her broken wrist on a splint, her mending head on a soft pillow, and...

Barry came down for weekends. He and Gerda had declared their affections towards one another even at the Looe infirmary, where Gerda had been conveyed from the scene of accident. It had been no moment...

Though Gerda said “What’s the use of my talking about it to people when I’ve made up my mind?” and though she had not the habit of talking for conversation’s sake, she did obediently open the subject ...

They all talked about it again, and said the same things, and different things, and more things, and got no nearer one another with it all. Soon Barry and Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of...

Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous...

Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous...

In November Neville and Gerda, now both convalescent, joined Rodney in their town flat. Rodney thought London would buck Neville up. London does buck you up, even if it is November and there is no gul...

To Pamela Neville said, “Are you afraid of getting old, Pamela?” Pamela replied, “Not a bit. Are you?” And she confessed it. “Often it’s like a cold douche of water down my spine, the thought of it. I...

Neville, walking away from Pamela’s grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A ...

But she did not start for Rome, or even write to Nan, for when she got home she went to bed with influenza....

The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type⁠—a deep, warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church...

The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type⁠—a deep, warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church...

They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, ...

And then Rosalind’s letter came. It came by the afternoon post⁠—the big, mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner. “Gilbert’s wife,” pronounced Grandmama, non-committal...

Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr. Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing ...

Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors o...

Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors o...

When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength w...

“Nan⁠—” They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a cigarette. “Nan⁠—do you guess why I’ve come?” Nan threw away the match. “No, mother. How should I?⁠ ⁠… One does come to Rome, I sup...

The day that followed was strange, and does not sound likely, but life often does not. Nan took Mrs. Hilary out to lunch at a trattoria near the Forum, as it were to change the subject, and they spent...

Nan sat up late, correcting proofs, after Mrs. Hilary had gone to bed. Galleys lay all round her on the floor by the stove. She let them slip from her knee and lie there. She hated them.⁠ ⁠… She press...

Mrs. Hilary came in, in her dressing-gown, red-eyed. She had heard strangled sounds, and knew that her child was crying. “My darling!” Her arms were round Nan’s shoulders; she was kneeling among the p...

Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a cooperative press next year. He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to ...

Kay was home for the Christmas vacation. He was full, not so much of Cambridge, as of schemes for establishing a cooperative press next year. He was learning printing and binding, and wanted Gerda to ...

Ten days later Gerda said to Barry, “I’ve been thinking it over again, Barry, and I’ve decided that perhaps it will be all right for us to get married after all.” Barry took both her hands and kissed ...

Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its f...

Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party. After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies an...

Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party. After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies an...

In February she suddenly tired of London and the British climate, and was moved by a desire to travel. So she went to Italy, and stayed in Capri with Nan and Stephen Lumley, who were leading on that i...

February at St. Mary’s Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and droppe...

February at St. Mary’s Bay. The small fire flickered and fluttered in the grate with a sound like the windy beating of wings. The steady rain sloped against the closed windows of The Gulls, and droppe...

In the Crescent music blared out⁠—once more the Army, calling for strayed sheep in the rain. “Glory for you, glory for me!” it shouted. And then, presently: “Count⁠—your⁠—blessings! Count them one by ...

Not Grandmama’s and not Neville’s should be, after all, the last word, but Pamela’s. Pamela, who seemed lightly, and as it were casually, to swing a key to the door against which Neville, among many o...