--I ought to be writing my book, and you ought
to be answering these."

"We've only got twenty-one whole mornings left," said Rachel. "And my
father'll be here in a day or two."

However, she drew a pen and paper towards her and began to write
laboriously,

"My dear Evelyn--"

Terence, meanwhile, read a novel which some one else had written, a
process which he found essential to the composition of his own. For a
considerable time nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock
and the fitful scratch of Rachel's pen, as she produced phrases which
bore a considerable likeness to those which she had condemned. She was
struck by it herself, for she stopped writing and looked up; looked
at Terence deep in the arm-chair, looked at the different pieces of
furniture, at her bed in the corner, at the window-pane which showed the
branches of a tree filled in with sky, heard the clock ticking, and was
amazed at the gulf which lay between all that and her sheet of paper.
Would there ever be a time when the world was one and indivisible? Even
with Terence himself--how far apart they could be, how little she knew
what was passing in his brain now! She then finished her sentence, which
was awkward and ugly, and stated that they were "both very happy, and
going to be married in the autumn probably and hope to live in London,
where we hope you will come and see us when we get back." Choosing
"affectionately," after some further speculation, rather than sincerely,
she signed the letter and was doggedly beginning on another when Terence
remarked, quoting from his book:

"Listen to this, Rachel. 'It is probable that Hugh' (he's the hero, a
literary man), 'had not realised at the time of his marriage, any more
than the young man of parts and imagination usually does realise, the
nature of the gulf which separates the needs and desires of the male
from the needs and desires of the female. . . . At first they had been
very happy. The walking tour in Switzerland had been a time of jolly
companionship and stimulating revelations for both of them. Betty had
proved herself the ideal comrade. . . . They had shouted _Love_ _in_
_the_ _Valley_ to each other across the snowy slopes of the Riffelhorn'
(and so on, and so on--I'll skip the descriptions). . . . 'But in
London, after the boy's birth, all was changed. Betty was an admirable
mother; but it did not take her long to find out that motherhood, as
that function is understood by the mo