if Gerda and if Kay thus sailed over sorrow, too. Rodney, she knew, did.
But she knew Rodney better, in some ways, than she knew Gerda and Kay.

To think suddenly of Rodney, of Gerda and of Kay, sleeping in the still
house beyond the singing wood and silver garden, was to founder swiftly
in the cold, dark seas, to be hurt again with the stabbing envy of the
night. Not jealousy, for she loved them all too well for that. But envy
of their chances, of their contacts with life. Having her own contacts,
she wanted all kinds of others too. Not only Rodney's, Gerda's and Kay's,
but those of all her family and friends. Conscious, as one is on
birthdays, of intense life hurrying swiftly to annihilation, she strove
desperately to dam it. It went too fast. She looked at the wet strands of
black hair now spread over her shoulders to dry in the sun, at her
strong, supple, active limbs, and thought of the days to come, when the
black hair should be grey and the supple limbs refuse to carry her up
beech trees, and when, if she bathed in the sunrise, she would get
rheumatism. In those days, what did one do to keep from sinking in the
black seas of regret? One sat by the fire, or in the sunlit garden, old
and grey and full of sleep--yes, one went to sleep, when one could. When
one couldn't, one read. But one's eyes got tired soon--Neville thought of
her grandmother--and one had to be read aloud to, by someone who couldn't
read aloud. That wouldn't be enough to stifle vain regrets; only
rejoicing actively in the body did that. So, before that time came, one
must have slain regret, crushed that serpent's head for good and all.

But did anyone ever succeed in doing this? Rodney, who had his full,
successful, useful, interesting life; Rodney, who had made his mark and
was making it; Rodney, the envy of many others, and particularly the envy
of Neville, with the jagged ends of her long since broken career stabbing
her; Rodney from time to time burned inwardly with scorching ambitions,