en, in Ivor's
bold, large hand, a single quatrain.

"Hail, maid of moonlight! Bride of the sun, farewell! Like bright plumes
moulted in an angel's flight, There sleep within my heart's most mystic
cell Memories of morning, memories of the night."

There followed a postscript of three lines: "Would you mind asking one
of the housemaids to forward the packet of safety-razor blades I left in
the drawer of my washstand. Thanks.--Ivor."

Seated under the Venus's immemorial gesture, Mary considered life
and love. The abolition of her repressions, so far from bringing the
expected peace of mind, had brought nothing but disquiet, a new and
hitherto unexperienced misery. Ivor, Ivor...She couldn't do without him
now. It was evident, on the other hand, from the poem on the back of the
picture postcard, that Ivor could very well do without her. He was at
Gobley now, so was Zenobia. Mary knew Zenobia. She thought of the last
verse of the song he had sung that night in the garden.

"Le lendemain, Phillis peu sage Aurait donne moutons et chien Pour un
baiser que le volage A Lisette donnait pour rien."

Mary shed tears at the memory; she had never been so unhappy in all her
life before.

It was Denis who first broke the silence. "The individual," he began in
a soft and sadly philosophical tone, "is not a self-supporting universe.
There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when
he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes
besides himself."

He had contrived this highly abstract generalisation as a preliminary
to a personal confidence. It was the first gambit in a conversation that
was to lead up to Jenny's caricatures.

"True," said Mary; and, generalising for herself, she added, "When one
individual comes into intimate contact with another, she--or he, of
course, as the case may be--must almost inevitably receive or inflict
suffering."

"One is apt," Denis went on, "to be so spellbound by the spectacle of
one's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presents
itself to other people as well as to oneself."

Mary was not listening. "The difficulty," she said, "makes itself
acutely felt in matters of sex. If one individual seeks intimate contact
with another individual in the natural way, she is certain to receive or
inflict suffering. If on the other hand, she avoids contacts, she risks
the equally grave sufferings that follow on unnatural repressions. As
you see, it