She remembered their quarrels, and in particular
how they had been quarreling about Helen that very afternoon, and she
thought how often they would quarrel in the thirty, or forty, or fifty
years in which they would be living in the same house together, catching
trains together, and getting annoyed because they were so different. But
all this was superficial, and had nothing to do with the life that
went on beneath the eyes and the mouth and the chin, for that life was
independent of her, and independent of everything else. So too, although
she was going to marry him and to live with him for thirty, or forty,
or fifty years, and to quarrel, and to be so close to him, she
was independent of him; she was independent of everything else.
Nevertheless, as St. John said, it was love that made her understand
this, for she had never felt this independence, this calm, and this
certainty until she fell in love with him, and perhaps this too was
love. She wanted nothing else.
For perhaps two minutes Miss Allan had been standing at a little
distance looking at the couple lying back so peacefully in their
arm-chairs. She could not make up her mind whether to disturb them or
not, and then, seeming to recollect something, she came across the hall.
The sound of her approach woke Terence, who sat up and rubbed his eyes.
He heard Miss Allan talking to Rachel.
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