you going to tell the man? That he has children?"

"No. That he is throwing his life into a cul-de-sac."

"He won't believe you."

"No."

"And it will probably end by his falling in love with you and think
what a terrible mess the cow and the squirrel will make."

Edgar came up to them.

"Will you give me the pleasure of a dance?"

"I should love to."

Virginia's apricot had become a strand in the pattern of the ball-room.

A parma violet lady settled on Matthew like a fly.

"I can't think how you have anything left to say to Virginia," she
remarked disagreeably. "But I suppose you simply make love to her."

"It is not simple at all."

"Let us go and sit somewhere," Edgar was saying, and they went into
another room.

All of our real indiscretions in life come in the form of
generalisations. A name is a warning, and we really give ourselves away
in abstract philosophisings applied by an intelligent companion to the
particular.

"Why should we accept ready-made standards?" Edgar said. "None of the
great governing forces of life can fit into a ditch of conventions."

"No."

"Sometimes you have to set out to sea and turn your back on the old
familiar coastline."

"In a pleasure boat for an excursion."

"In a sailing ship for distant seas."

"Argosies have a way of turning into penny steamers."

"You ought not to say that--you of all people, who sail the seas in a
tub with a sunshade."

"Oh," she said, "I am at the mercy of the winds. But you have a harbour
and an anchor and a flag to fly."

"You are thinking that I'm a fool."

"Yes."

"One must sometimes cut one's losses."

"One must sometimes cut one's gains--a much more difficult thing."

"You can't throw away light."

"The world is brighter with your back to the sun."

"Virginia," he said, "I have made up my mind."

"What can I say? I am helpless. I see you going shipwreck on dummy
rocks--the water let in by a penknife."

"You are cruel."

"Don't you think I know those frontiers, when paradise seems but a step
away, but you know that it is a step you can't retrace?"

"Why should you want to go backwards?"

She looked past him into space.

"Behind us," she murmured, "lie so many things--memories of childhood,
dim happy echoes, primroses and hoops and peace shot with laughter. When
you have taken your step you daren't look back. Remembering hurts too
much. And so you look forward--always forward, knowing that the promised
land