Rosemary was not ungenerous. She showed her chagrin and her admiration, openly. “It’s not even as if it were your own language,” she grumbled. “And you don’t seem to take half the trouble over it that I do.” “Perhaps it is because you are in your own country and I out of mine,” Alix suggested. “Now what on earth do you mean by that?” Rosemary inquired. “I have nothing else to do but think about my studies,” said Alix. Rosemary stared. “You’ve got the same things to think about that I have. Surely you are at home by now. All the girls like you and you’re never left out of anything.” “It is not anything like that. Everybody is as kind as possible,” said Alix. She could not, she knew, make Rosemary understand. Rosemary, fundamentally, could not take foreign countries seriously—could not believe that anyone lucky enough to be in England should have all their energies bent on leaving it. “And what do you girls intend to do with yourselves?” Mrs. Bradley asked them one day at the firelit tea-table. She had, as usual, a pile of papers beside her and laid down her fountain pen to pour out the tea. “Alix is doing so well that she can really begin to think of choosing a career and it’s not too soon to turn things in that direction.” Even dear Mrs. Bradley took it for granted that she might be quite satisfied to make a career out of her own country. “I hope I shall marry when I go back to Maman,” said Alix. “Now isn’t she altogether too priceless, Mummy!” cried Rosemary. “One would have thought that with all the time you’ve been in England, Alix, you’d have got over those French ideas about marriage.—I suppose you’ll actually say that you’d let your mother choose a husband for you.” “But who would choose one so well?” said Alix. Yet it was not true; it was not true that she still believed this of Maman. England had already changed her so much. But she did not intend that Rosemary should guess it. “Who would? Why, you yourself!” cried Rosemary. “What can your mother know about it? Aren’t you an individual with your own tastes and feelings? And do you seriously think marriage the only career for a woman?—Do you really think getting married the whole meaning of life?” “It is a sad thing to be a _vieille fille_, I think,” said Alix. “Sad? Why sad? You don’t call Aunt Bella sad, do you? And there’re thousands and thousands more like her. All of ’em as jolly as possible; the unmarried people nowadays. Jollier than the married ones, I think;—and no wonder.” “In their hearts, you may be sure, they wish they did not have to be quite so jolly,” Alix demurred. “They must feel it sad when they reflect that they have only other people’s children to care for—and those not the most interesting. And it must be sad to be alone at one’s _foyer_.”