But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full, successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions, with jealousies of other men, with all the heats, rancours and troubles of the race that is set before us. He had done, was doing, something, but it wasn't enough. He had got, was getting, far,--but it wasn't far enough. He couldn't achieve what he wanted; there were obstacles everywhere. Fools hindered his work; men less capable than he got jobs he should have had. Immersed in politics, he would have liked more time for writing; he would have liked a hundred other careers besides his own, and could have but the one. (Gerda and Kay, still poised on the threshold of life, still believed that they could indeed have a hundred.) No, Rodney was not immune from sorrow, but at least he had more with which to keep it at bay than Neville. Neville had no personal achievements; she had only her love for Rodney, Gerda and Kay, her interest in the queer, enchanting pageant of life, her physical vigours (she could beat any of the rest of them at swimming, walking, tennis or squash) and her active but wasted brain. A good brain, too; she had easily and with brilliance passed her medical examinations long ago--those of them for which she had had time before she had been interrupted. But now a wasted brain; squandered, atrophied, gone soft with disuse. Could she begin to use it now? Or was she forever held captive, in deep woods, between the two twilights? "I am in deep woods, Between the two twilights. Over valley and hill I hear the woodland wave Like the voice of Time, as slow, The voice of Life, as grave, The voice of Death, as still...." 2 The voices, the young loud clear voices of Gerda and of Kay, shrilled down from the garden, and Esau yapped in answer. They were calling her. They had probably been to wake her and had found her gone. Neville smiled (when she smiled a dimple came in one pale brown cheek) and swung herself down from the beech. Kay and Gerda were of enormous importance; the most important things in life, except Rodney; but not everything, because nothing is ever everything in this so complex world. When she came out of the wood into the garden, now all golden with morning, they flung themselves upon her and called her a sneak for not having wakened them to bathe. "You'll be late for breakfast," they chanted. "Late on your forty-third birthday."