"If you want a new job, and a job with travel and life in it," said her cousin, sounding her, "I don't know why you don't go out to the Pacific Islands and join Neil. You may be sure that wherever Neil is there'll be travel enough and life enough." She watched Kitty idly through a little whirl of cigarette smoke. But Kitty looked no more than bored, bending over the _Times_ and manicuring her nails. "Neil would tire me. I've grown too old for Neil. Besides, it wouldn't be proper; I've broken off my engagement. I've not had the last letter back yet, you know, so he may have got it. Besides..." Kitty paused only for a moment, and added in the same casual tone, "besides, I'm too much in love with Nicky Chester, though I can't have him, to have any use for anyone else just now." Her cousin nodded. "I knew that, darling, of course. And so you've renounced each other. How silly. But it won't last. It never does. Go and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, then, to pass the time." 3 But there were hours of the night when it seemed to Kitty that she could not go and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, that she could not be companion, however capable, to any travelling lady of taste, culture and means, or clerk, however confidential, to any peer, M.P., or even gentleman; that none of these careers (were they careers? She still sought to define that word) would pass the time at all; that nothing, in fact, would pass it except working for Nicholas Chester, seeing him sometimes, hearing his voice.... Always addicted to metaphysical speculation in the night, even in nights of anguish, she would speculate on this queer disease, so common to the race, which had overtaken (and not, as they had both candidly remarked, for the first time, possibly not even for the last) herself and Nicholas Chester. What was it, this extraordinary driving pressure of emotion, this quite disproportionate desire for companionship with, for contact with, one person out of all the world of people and things, which made, while it lasted, all other desires, all other emotions, pale and faint beside it? Which so perverted and wrenched from its bearings the mind of a man like Nicholas Chester that he was for throwing overboard the cherished principles which were the cargo he had for long been so desperately bent on carrying, through storm and stress, to the country of his dreams? Which made him say, "No one will find out, and if they do, let them and be damned to them"?... Desire for a person; it had, it had always had, an extraordinarily dynamic effect on the lives of men and women. When it came into play, principle, chivalry, common sense, intellect, humour, culture, sweetness and light, all we call civilisation, might crumple up like match-board so this one overwhelming desire, shared by all the animal creation, might be satisfied. On this rock the world, the pathetic, eager, clever, foolish, so heavily handicapped world, might be wrecked.