"It _is_ odd to hear you talk like that. I should have thought that you would have passionately repudiated any sort of kinship with mother. And surely the differences between people are very sharp? Whatever you may say, you're very distinct from other people." "Not now," said Helen positively. "When I was very young, yes, and when I'm old then I'll be Helen Guest again, but now I'm just beginning on the middle years and your mother's just getting to the end of them, but we've all the experiences of life in common, even if we do approach them from a totally different stand-point." "I see what you mean. But you won't change will you, Helen? You won't be less yourself if you have a baby?" "Yes, I think I'll change; I don't think I'll be less myself but anyhow you'll have to risk that." "I don't want you any different," said Geoffrey very quietly. Helen threw back her head and laughed. "You don't know," she said, "I may become too awful, or I may improve enormously; the only single certain thing is that within the next year or two I'm going to do some good work." "You're like mother in one way anyhow: in your brutally uncompromising optimism." "And in another way too," Helen countered swiftly, "that I do most genuinely love one of the Mr. Greenes." MRS. HUGH BECKETT GREENE MRS. HUGH BECKETT GREENE I Jessica Deane wakened very early on her wedding morning and got up at once to look at the weather. The sun was slowly climbing up a clear sky, and there was a cold frostiness in the air that matched her mood. She looked out westwards over the roofs in the direction of the Greenes' house, and wondered whether Hugh were asleep or awake, and if awake whether he were feeling like her, keenly strung up, and exquisitely expectant, or only nervous and worried at the thought of dressing up to face a crowded church and a still more crowded reception. She crossed over to the long mirror and studied her face at close range. It would be awful to have a spot on my chin, she thought anxiously, even the smallest beginning of a spot would spoil my nerve, or a bloodshot eye, or hiccups at the last minute. What appalling things might happen to destroy me to-day. The mirror faithfully reflected back her own expression of dismay as she thought of all the depressing contingencies that might arise, and as she looked at it her face broke into a smile. Satisfied that even a close scrutiny showed no blemish, she stepped back a pace and looked at herself in detail. My hair grows well, she thought dispassionately, I'm glad it's so fair and goes back like that off my forehead, but I think my eyes are too wide apart, and really my chin is almost negligible, it fades away to nothing. In fact twenty years ago I would have been plain, it's pure luck that my kind of face happens to be in the mode at present. It's lucky too that Hugh is so dark; we ought to look nice together.