“It’s not fair. We’re going to be married. It’s cruel of Justin. It doesn’t happen to other people like this. It doesn’t happen in books. There was Oliver—there’s Robin and Annabel——Why should we be different? Everywhere people love each other.” Then, with a whimsical twist of her thought: “Well, I suppose _they’re_ satisfied.” “I expect they are.” The face in the glass had also its mocking smile. “They’re in love, you see.” “But Justin’s in love——” “Is he?” asked the looking-glass. And as she stared into those reflected eyes she saw rising up in their depths as if they were not eyes but pools of memory, a gleam, minute and exquisite as an enamel, of green and midday blue, and a patch of black like a sloe-bush and its scanty shadow, and herself, a tiny far-away self, lying under it listening to a tiny Justin who plucked at the thyme and the golden hawksbit as he said—she heard his voice— “Marry me—will you? Then we needn’t have any upset.” For an instant the old bliss held her again. “He hasn’t grown much, has he, since then?” The looking-glass could mock her while its eyes still held the vision. She answered sullenly— “What does it matter? I like him this way.” “So much,” it drawled, “the worse for Justin.” “Can I help that?” She struck at the table in front of her so that the brushes clattered, and a bottle of lavender tipped, and fell, and broke. And while the sweet, domestic fume of it filled the room she heard the instant, inexorable comment— “What’s the use of that? What’s the use of behaving like a child?” “Am I his keeper?” she began fiercely, but at once, with equal violence, it over-rode her— “Aren’t you? Aren’t you? Haven’t you made your plans?” Her eyes fell before the completeness of its contemptuous comprehension. Yes—she had made her plans.... She knew—she had always known—that she could marry him, content him, and find her own happiness in doing so.... She could humour him: aid and abet him in his harmless, useless enterprises: lap him in little lies and call it management.... The tyrannous motherliness that is in every woman leaped within her at the idea. Of course she could manage Justin.... They would lead happy, well-fed lives.... They would die at last, placidly, and be buried, and that would be the end of them; because the spirit within them would have been stifled long ago.... She nodded deliberately. Yes, she could do that.... She knew herself capable of it.... She had killed one self already—and for that, too, she supposed, she was now being punished.... If she had stayed on in Paris, learning, growing, acquiring the self-mastery that is Art and the art that is self-mastery, she would have come back to Brackenhurst at last, full-grown, self-possessing, of account, good enough for Justin, the right woman for Justin....