Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the tree-tops, down in the moss. She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now. She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism that is genius. Chapter 11 When Edward got home his mother was asleep in the armchair. Her whole person rose and fell like a tropical sea. Her shut eyes were like those of a statue, behind the lids of which one knows there are no pupils. Her eyebrows were slightly raised, as if in expostulation at being obliged to breathe. Her figure expressed the dignity of old age, which may or may not be due to rheumatism. Edward, as he looked at her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing--an unsympathetic atmosphere. 'I've got some news for you, mother.' 'Nothing unpleasant, dear?' 'No, Pleasant. It makes me very happy.' 'The good are always happy,' replied Mrs. Marston securely. Before the bland passivity of this remark it seemed that irony itself must soften. 'I am engaged, mother.' 'What in, dear?' 'I am going to bring home a wife.' She was deaf and very sleepy. 'What kind of a knife, dear?' she asked. 'I am going to marry Hazel Woodus.' 'You can't do that, dear,' She spoke with unruffled calm, as if Edward were three years old. 'I can, and shall mother.' 'Ah, well, it won't be for a long, long time,' she said, thinking aloud as she often did, and adding with the callousness that sometimes comes with age--arising not from hardness, but from the atrophy of the emotions--'and, of course, she may die before then.' 'Die!' Edward's voice surprised himself, and it made his mother jump. 'The young do die,' she went on; 'we all have to go. Your poor father fell asleep. I shall fall asleep.' She began to do so. But his next words made her wide awake again. 'I'm going to be married in May, next month.' Her whole weight of passive resistance was set against his purpose. 'Such unseemly haste!' she murmured. 'So inordinate--such a hurried marriage!'