An Unofficial rose

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The idea of doing what she ought, early and deeply implanted in her soul, and sedulously ever since cultivated, had by now almost removed from her the possibility, even as something prima jacie, of a pure self-regarding movement of will. She felt, at the moment, the lack of this strong uncomplicated machinery. The clamorous needs which devoured her were hideously unpractical, and she envied those for whom the want and the grasping movement were one and the same thing. She was prepared, moreover, and especially when she considered the wreck of her: marriage with Randall and what she had somehow done to Randall, to see in her absence of straightforward operative desires something corrupting, something deadening. There was, in her open formless life, some dreadful lack of vigour, some lack of any hard surface to grasp or to brace oneself against; and as she thus accused herself, ready almost to call her good and evil, she found herself again echoing some of Randall's words. She had not got a new personality. But the old one was certainly cracked.

She had not succeeded, either, with Miranda; and it sometimes seemed to her that both Randall and Miranda shrank away from her for the same reason. They needed about them the invigorating presence of shapely human wills; and they could not but see A

It was by this time desperately necessary for her to talk to Miranda about Felix. It was not that she expected Miranda to have much to say about this, and she did not really expect anything in the way of an argument. She would put the matter to her, she thought, rather vaguely. But it was necessary simply to have said these things, to have at least mentioned his name; and A

Meanwhile there was the task of deceiving Felix; for that was what it came to. Though she longed for his company, she was afraid to see too much of him in case there should be some revelation of her need which, if he were but to glimpse it, would whirl them blindly farther on. She did not want too much to enslave him when she was still not certain that she would keep him; and she did not want to be herself driven mad by his loss, if it should come to that. She wanted to see what she was doing; but this was what, with Miranda watchful, curious, morose, terribly present and officially unenlightened, she was not able to do. Her ideas remained separate and-refused to crystallize into a policy. She wondered if having failed in one marriage she should hastily contract another. She wondered if she would make a soldier's wife. She wondered if Randall would ever come back. She wondered about marriage, and Miranda, and Marie-Laure. She doubted everything except that she and Felix were in love. If only she could, quite simply, see that as the solution. She craved for that simplicity as for some unattainable degree of asceticism.

'Do stop walking about the room, said Miranda. 'You make me quite tired. Do stop or sit down. If you're going to stay.

'Sorry, dear, said A

Miranda must think she was behaving oddly. She was behaving oddly. But the great dark void of the house gaped behind her and she could not bring herself to leave her daughter's room. She must speak to her now.

'What are you so nervous about? said Miranda. 'You're making me nervous.

They stared at each other in the silence of the house, and it was as if they were listening for distant footsteps. If there were other listeners they were hostile ones. A

'I'm sorry.

'Don't keep saying you're sorry. Tell me what's the matter.

'Nothing's the matter, said A

'Miranda, she said, 'would you mind if I married again?»

There was a silence in which the fluttering of the moth could be heard. It was beating on the inside of the lamp shade. A

Miranda's face was a wooden mask. She plumped up her pillows and sat up straighter. 'But there's no question of that, is there?

'Oh well, there might be, said A

The silence continued until she had to look back again, when Miranda said, 'But you are married. To Daddy.

'Yes, but I suppose I won't go on being.

'I thought marriages were for always, said Miranda. She was tense, pi

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Miranda said after a moment. 'That's what he says now.

'Do you think he'll — stop wanting that?

'Well, he might, mightn't he?

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'Yes.

'Did he say anything then which — well, about going away for good? He must have let you know that he was. A