in a warm firelit
room. When, on the other hand, he began to think of unmarried people, he
saw them active in an unlimited world; above all, standing on the
same ground as the rest, without shelter or advantage. All the most
individual and humane of his friends were bachelors and spinsters;
indeed he was surprised to find that the women he most admired and knew
best were unmarried women. Marriage seemed to be worse for them than
it was for men. Leaving these general pictures he considered the people
whom he had been observing lately at the hotel. He had often revolved
these questions in his mind, as he watched Susan and Arthur, or Mr.
and Mrs. Thornbury, or Mr. and Mrs. Elliot. He had observed how the shy
happiness and surprise of the engaged couple had gradually been replaced
by a comfortable, tolerant state of mind, as if they had already done
with the adventure of intimacy and were taking up their parts. Susan
used to pursue Arthur about with a sweater, because he had one day let
slip that a brother of his had died of pneumonia. The sight amused him,
but was not pleasant if you substituted Terence and Rachel for Arthur
and Susan; and Arthur was far less eager to get you in a corner and talk
about flying and the mechanics of aeroplanes. They would settle down.
He then looked at the couples who had been married for several years. It
was true that Mrs. Thornbury had a husband, and that for the most part
she was wonderfully successful in bringing him into the conversation,
but one could not imagine what they said to each other when they were
alone. There was the same difficulty with regard to the Elliots, except
that they probably bickered openly in private. They sometimes bickered
in public, though these disagreements were painfully covered over by
little insincerities on the part of the wife, who was afraid of public
opinion, because she was much stupider than her husband, and had to make
efforts to keep hold of him. There could be no doubt, he decided,
that it would have been far better for the world if these couples
had separated. Even the Ambroses, whom he admired and respected
profoundly--in spite of all the love between them, was not their
marriage too a compromise? She gave way to him; she spoilt him; she
arranged things for him; she who was all truth to others was not true to
her husband, was not true to her friends if they came in conflict with
her husband. It was a strange and piteous flaw in her nature. Perhaps