mpatibility. I think love isn't love and can't last unless it's
free. I think marriage ought to be abolished--not yet, perhaps, but when
we've become civilized. It will be. It's bound to be. As it is, I think
every woman has a right to have a baby if she wants one. If Emmeline
had had a baby, she wouldn't be devastating us now."

"That's what you think, but it isn't what you feel. It's all thinking
with you, Dorothy. The revolt goes on in your brain. You'll never do
anything. It isn't that you haven't the courage to go against your men.
You haven't the will. You don't want to."

"Why should I? What do they do? Father and Michael and Nicky don't
interfere with me any more than Mother does."

"You know I'm not thinking of them. They don't really matter."

"Who are you thinking of then? Frank Drayton? You needn't!"

It was mean of Rosalind to hit below the belt like that, when she knew
that _she_ was safe. Michael had never been brought against her and
never would be. It was disgusting of her to imply that Dorothy's state
of mind was palpable, when her own (though sufficiently advertised by
her behaviour) had received from Michael's sister the consecration of
silence as a secret, tragic thing.

They had reached the tram-lines.

At the sight of the Charing Cross `bus Rosalind assumed an air of
rollicking, adventurous travel.

"My hat! What an evening! I shall have a ripping ride down. Don't say
there's no room on the top. Cheer up, Dorothy!"

Which showed that Rosalind Jervis was a free woman, suggested that life
had richer thrills than marrying Dorothy's brother Michael, and fixed
the detested imputation securely on her friend.

Dorothy watched her as she swung herself on to the footboard and up the
stair of the motor bus. There was room on the top. Rosalind, in fact,
had the top all to herself.

* * * * *

As Dorothy crossed the Heath again in the twilight she saw something
white on the terrace of her father's house. Her mother was waiting
for her.

She thought at first that Aunt Emmeline had gone off her head and that
she had been sent for to keep her quiet. She gloried in their dependence
on her. But no, that wasn't likely. Her mother was just watching for her
as she used to watch for her and the boys when they were little and had
been sent across the Heath to Grannie's house with a message.

And at the sight and memory of her mother Dorothy felt a childish, sick
dissatisf