everybody; you believe in everybody.

Carteret. Well, my experience has shewn me that you come fewer croppers in life if you believe in people, than if you're suspicious of them. It may be an illusion, but that's my experience.

Rachel. I wonder?… And there is another great difference. Women—so many women—are cowards; afraid, always afraid.

Carteret. Afraid of what, you foolish creature?

Rachel. Of all sorts of things. I was full of terrors when I was a child. Not only of robbers and ghosts, of absurd things that never happened, but of people, who were cross or unkind … of everything. And then I was left by myself, and I was poor, and had to earn my own living. It was dreadful.

Carteret. Well, that's all over. You needn't think of it any more. I'll take care of you, never fear. Nothing and nobody shall frighten you now.

Rachel. Oh, I know. I've always felt what a rock of defence you were ever since that first evening, when we had broken down in the motor and you stopped yours beside us in the dark.

Carteret. And found you, the pretty little governess, by the side of the road with the son of the house! having broken your employer's motor. By George, you looked frightened then. I don't think I ever saw a more woebegone little object than you were, standing there huddled together, looking as if you were trying to escape from the lights of the motor.

Rachel [shuddering]. Yes, those horrible lights that would keep blazing away all round us, and oh, I did so want to hide, to sink under the earth, never to be found again!

Carteret. Come, come, it wasn't as bad as that: though I must admit it was pretty awful when we had to go back and face your infuriated employer.

Carteret. I think she had a case, mind you! Going out for a joy ride with her son at that time of night in her car!

Rachel. Oh, the rapture of that moment when you stood up for me, and then, when you found out you had known my dad!

Carteret. Rather a good moment, that—a trump card, wasn't it?

Rachel. I can hear you saying it now, 'Tom Farrar, my old shipmate.' Oh, the relief of it! the relief!

Carteret [smiling]. Poor little girl!

Rachel [recovering herself]. But we needn't think about it; and you were there, and you brought me back with you, and then, as they say in the fairy tales, we married and lived happily ever after.

Carteret. Except that I had to go off to the Cape directly afterwards. Good Lord! How I used to laugh at the other men on board, when they were wanting to go ashore to see their wives and babies, or to come back home when they were aboard. I used to think what fools they were; but they weren't. I was the fool all right. And now I know better—I have done just the same. And after getting that splendid ship I was so proud of, and after always saying that I would not take a shore-going job for the world, I jumped at this job at the Admiralty just to be near you and Mary, and, oh, I am so glad I did.

Rachel [caressingly]. We are awfully happy, aren't we?

Carteret. Awfully.

Rachel [musingly]. Mary—Mary—[she says the name twice]. How I love that child! I love her absurdly, fiercely. If I tried to love her more I couldn't. I have sometimes a wild sense of the joy of having her that makes me afraid of fate…. [She speaks on in a more ordinary tone]. Men aren't like that, I daresay.

Carteret [smiling]. No, I don't believe they are. They just love and love their child, that's all.

Rachel. Yes, that's all. And that's everything.

Carteret [smiling]. And that's everything.

[Rachel sitting looking before her—Carteret leaning back in his chair looking up at ceiling; not at her].

Carteret. That night, at Simonstown, that I got your telegram saying the child was born, that you had a daughter—it was so wonderful, so impossible to understand. That night I remember, after I knew, I went for a blow on the quarter deck quite late, before turning in—in the sort of dark it is out there when the sky is deep purple and the huge stars are blazing in it like holes opening into glory—and I kept saying to myself, A child! I have a child—my child! I really believe for a while I was almost mad. It seemed to me that the plash of the sea, the choppy little waves beating against the gangway ladder were answering me, were saying the same thing, too—my child! Life had changed in that hour. And I wondered if I could go on waiting, waiting for the moment when I should be with you both. I didn't tell any of them about it out there. I didn't trust myself. I didn't know what I should say if I began to speak of it.

Rachel [smiling]. You'd have been all over the place.

Carteret [trying to hide his emotion]. I believe I should, for once. Good old Tom! I was with him when he died in the East. He would have been glad to know I had got his little girl out of a scrape.

Rachel. And that you had married her.

Carteret. Well … he would have thought me a bit old for you, perhaps.

Rachel. You're not to say that! You're just the right age.

Carteret. You really think so?

Rachel. Of course I do.

Carteret [still smiling]. Now, Rachel, were you in love with that young Thornton?

Rachel. No, I don't think I was. It was a boy and girl sort of thing.

Carteret [smiling, but sighing too]. Yes, boy and girl. I suppose when there are young people together that sort of thing happens.

Rachel. Oh, don't say it in that tone. You don't mean to say you're jealous of him—because he was young?

Carteret [more seriously]. Jealous? Of you? Of my wife? No.

Rachel. Well, some people are. They always are in books.

Carteret. I'm not in a book, and that sort of thing isn't good enough for me. [Goes on in an ordinary tone]. I wonder what became of Thornton. Have you ever heard anything of him?

Rachel [with an impulse]. Will, how different you are from other people!

Carteret [surprised]. Why?

Rachel. You find me on the road in the dark with a young man. How do you know I was not running away with him?

Carteret [smiling]. Well, if you were, you weren't doing it very successfully. To tell the truth, there were so