"Ludicrous--no. Everyone comes up against his own limitations. You've got to work within them that's all. After all, there are plenty of jobs you can do that want doing--simply shouting to be done." "Pammie dear, it's worse than I've said. I'm a low creature. I don't only want to do jobs that want doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm damnably ambitious. You'll despise that, of course--and you're quite right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most men and many women are tormented by it--they itch for recognition." "Of course. One is." "You too, Pammie?" "I have been. Less now. Life gets to look short, when you're thirty-nine." "Ah, but you have it--recognition, even fame, in the world you work in. You count for something. If you value it, there it is. I wouldn't grumble if I'd played your part in the piece. It's a good part--a useful part and a speaking part." "I suppose we all feel we should rather like to play someone else's part for a change. There's nothing exciting about mine. Most people would far prefer yours." They would, of course; Neville knew it. The happy political wife rather than the unmarried woman worker; Rodney, Gerda and Kay for company rather than Frances Carr. There was no question which was the happier lot, the fuller, the richer, the easier, the more entertaining. "Ah well.... You see, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her--what am I too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy, brainless animal--it is such a terrific sight when in human form. Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way--you know. Hinting that she isn't alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley." Pamela took off her glasses and polished them. "Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?" "I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing I often do with Rosalind--it doesn't seem worth while. But this time I saw red. I told her what I thought of her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did arrange to be in Rome at the same time and to see a lot of each other; where was the harm? No use. You can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled, and said 'My dear, we all know our Nan. We all know too that Stephen Lumley has been in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment, and one hears that they are seen everywhere together. Why shut one's eyes to obvious deductions? You're so like an ostrich, Neville.' I said I'd rather be an ostrich than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's concerns,--and by the time we had got to that I thought it was far enough, so I had an engagement with my dressmaker." "It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed. "She'll never change her spots.... Do you suppose it's true about Nan?"