iv

"How are you, Edgar?" asked Olivia. She sat by the fire in the blue-grey drawing-room; and there was work in her hands. The work was obviously a garment for a small child. He recognised her at once by the well-arched eyebrows, and by the fact that she wore—as in his first vision—a dress which was olive-green in colour. The freckles were banished (whether by the season, or by some more permanent cure, he could not tell); but the calm, innocent eyes and odd little nose were much as he remembered them to have been. Her shoulders were broader, and her breast had developed. Otherwise she was the agreeable creature he had known, between fair and dark, with plump arms and legs and a lot of fair hair. She had a very sweet lazy smile, and an unself-conscious manner which came of not taking herself very seriously. She was about twenty-six. Theoretically, Edgar knew, Olivia was his ideal type of woman. She gave love with the eager readiness of the trustful child; she spoke quietly and seldom, but without constraints; she had courage and patience and unselfishness. And he was in love with her opposite. One more insoluble problem.

"How are you?" he answered. "And how's ... er, Stephens?" Then, with the proud feeling of taking his fences: "And how are the babies?"

"How nice of you to ask about them!" said Olivia, comfortably, with her slow, happy, lazy smile. "Joan isn't very grand. She's got a cold. That makes her just a little trying and sentimental at the moment. But Michael is tremendously hefty, and already weighs about ten stone. He's a sort of prize ox. In fact Mercy—Peter's sister—says he's not like a baby at all, but like a beautiful white calf. You haven't seen either of them, I expect, though Claudia has. Joan's three; and Michael's just over a year, and walks well. Look here, you ought to come and see them. They'd do you good. You must be getting quite middle-aged, Edgar. Yes, I can see you are. You ought to have children of your own. Then you wouldn't have time to grow old. Come and see them, will you?"

"This conversation is going to be extremely indelicate and extremely rude, I can see," replied Edgar. "I begin already to remember you as an excessively rude and, indelicate girl in a pigtail. I am not middle-aged, and I don't look as though I were middle-aged. So that's finished. As to the babies, I will come. I ought to have come before; but I had forgotten all about you. When Claudia said you were here I had really to recall who you were. How is it you never come to see us? Or do you come, secretly?"

Olivia grimaced.

"I go out very little. The babies, you see. Michael needs somebody still—they both need somebody to put them to bed; and Michael sometimes yells for me. I'm only out this evening because Peter's sister is staying with us. Peter's coming for me later on. He couldn't come to dinner, because he's finishing some work."

"Painting?"

Olivia shook her head, a little ruefully.

"Black-and-white. He's got some regular work to do at last. So things are looking up with us. We're beginning to save. He wants us to go and live in the country somewhere—not too far away—for the sake of the babies; and we shall do that next year if we can get a cottage."

"But would you like that? Wouldn't it be dull for you?" asked Edgar.

Olivia shook her head again, this time without any ruefulness at all.

"Nothing could be duller than London," she said. "Besides, if we had a nurse, Peter and I could always come up to town for an evening. One consequence of being rich would be a nurse; and that would mean lots of liberty, with the right girl. We shouldn't go anywhere quite in the wilds. And it isn't as though Joan would need a school just yet. She's got another three years before she need go. The great thing is for them to be able to play out-of-doors."

Edgar nodded, much impressed by this notion of life.

"Would you be happier?" he asked.

"I?" cried Olivia. "I couldn't be. I seem to have got everything I want."

Edgar stared meditatively at this remarkable woman.

"You're very fortunate," he said, drily. And then: "You're very rare."