public-spirited and more in earnest about life.


4

Across the garden came Nan Hilary, having come down from town to see
Neville on her forty-third birthday. Nan herself was not so incredibly
old as Neville; (for forty-three _is_ incredibly old, from any reasonable
standpoint). Nan was thirty-three and a half. She represented the
thirties; she was, in Neville's mind, a bridge between the remote
twenties and the new, extraordinary forties in which one could hardly
believe. It seems normal to be in the thirties; the right, ordinary age,
that most people are. Nan, who wrote, and lived in rooms in Chelsea, was
rather like a wild animal--a leopard or something. Long and lissome, with
a small, round, sallow face and withdrawn, brooding yellow eyes under
sulky black brows that slanted up to the outer corners. Nan had a good
time socially and intellectually. She was clever and lazy; she would
fritter away days and weeks in idle explorations into the humanities,
or curled up in the sun in the country like a cat. Her worst fault
was a cynical unkindness, against which she did not strive because
investigating the less admirable traits of human beings amused her. She
was infinitely amused by her nephew and her niece, but often spiteful to
them, merely because they were young. To sum up, she was a cynic, a rake,
an excellent literary critic, a sardonic and brilliant novelist, and she
had a passionate, adoring and protecting affection for Neville, who was
the only person who had always been told what she called the darker
secrets of her life.

She sat down on the grass, her thin brown hands clasped round her ankles,
and said to Neville, "You're looking very sweet, aged one. Forty-three