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funny as she did.

"I can't imagine where he got his ideas. It's absurd to think that he could have thought out all that nonsense for himself."

"Are you sure that boys of that age don't think more than we older people imagine? It's a sort of puberty of the spirit and its results are often strange."

"It seems so deceitful of Roger to have harboured thoughts like those all these years and never breathed a word about them. He might have been accusing me." She gave a chuckle. "To tell you the truth, when Roger was talking to me I felt just like Hamlet's mother." Then with hardly a break: "I wonder if I'm too old to play Hamlet?"

"Gertrude isn't a very good part, is it?"

Julia broke into a laugh of frank amusement.

"Don't be idiotic, Charles. I wouldn't play the Queen. I'd play Hamlet."

"D'you think it's suited to a woman?"

"Mrs. Siddons played it and so did Sarah Bernhardt. It would set a seal on my career, if you know what I mean. Of course there's the difficulty of the blank verse."

"I have heard actors speak it so that it was indistinguishable from prose," he answered.

"Yes, but that's not quite the same, is it?"

"Were you nice to Roger?"

She was surprised at his going back to that subject so suddenly, but she returned to it with a smile.

"Oh, charming."

"It's hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they're disappointed if we can't share their surprise when they have just discovered that a hen lays an egg. There's a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it's not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one's best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It's not very easy to give up one's ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do so little to resolve them. It may be that in a year or two he'll lose sight of the clouds of glory and accept the chain. It may be that he'll find what he's looking for, if not in God, then in art."

"I should hate him to be an actor if that's what you mean."

"No, I don't think he'll fancy that."

"And of course he can't be a playwright, he hasn't a sense of humour."

"I dare say he'll be quite content to go into the Foreign Office. It would be an asset to him there."

"What would you advise me to do?"

"Nothing. Let him be. That's probably the greatest kindness you can do him."

"But I can't help being worried about him."

"You needn't be. Be hopeful. You thought you'd only given birth to an ugly duckling; perhaps he's going to turn into a white-winged swan."

Charles was not giving Julia what she wanted. She had expected him to be more sympathetic.

"I suppose he's getting old, poor dear," she reflected. "He's losing his grip of things. He must have been impotent for years; I wonder it never struck me before."

She asked what the time was.

"I think I ought to go. I must get a long night's rest."

Julia slept well and when she awoke had at once a feeling of exultation. Tonight was the first night. It gave her a little thrill of pleasure to recollect that people had already been assembling at the pit and gallery doors when she left the theatre after the dress-rehearsal, and now at ten in the morning there was probably already a long queue.

"Lucky it's a fine day for them, poor brutes."

In bygone years she had been intolerably nervous before a first night. She had felt slightly sick all day and as the hours passed got into such a state that she almost thought she would have to leave the stage. But by now, after having passed through the ordeal so many times, she had acquired a certain nonchalance. Throughout the early part of the day she felt only happy and mildly excited; it was not till late in the afternoon that she began to feel ill at ease. She grew silent and wanted to be left alone. She also grew irritable, and Michael, having learnt from experience, took care to keep out of her way. Her hands and