ll be left? ... I think I'm getting hysterical, like
poor mother.... How ugly I look, these days."

She stopped before the looking-glass. Her face looked back at her, white
and thin, almost haggard, traced in the last few weeks for the first time
with definite lines round brow and mouth. Her dark hair was newly
streaked with grey.

"Middle age," said Neville, and a cold hand was laid round her heart. "It
had to come some time, and this illness has opened the door to it. Or
shall I look young again when I'm quite well? No, never young again."

She shivered.

"I look like mother to-day.... I _am_ like mother...."

So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She would recover from this
illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for
long. Middle age had begun. She would have off days in future, when she
would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming.
She wouldn't, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to
think "A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish." Soon they would be saying
"How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look," and then "She was a pretty
woman once."

Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all....

"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful.
"If you're vain they do--and I am vain. Vain of my mind and of my
body.... Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is
going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall
be hurt."

Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and minimising them. They
affected the thing that mattered most--one's relations with people. Men,
for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them.
They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk
to them: they told them things they would never tell a plain woman.
Rodney did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made love to them,
prettily and harmlessly.

The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney were to get to care
less ... to stop making love to her ... worse, to stop needing
her.... For he did need her; through all their relationship,
disappointing in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple,
demanding thing.

Humour suddenly came back.

"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and why she won't have
Barry tied to her. If Rodney wasn't tied to me he could flee from my
wrinkles...."

"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does any of