“Yes, but what do you understand by love? Do you mean by love the emotion that makes people go mad to possess—”
Gertrude rose from her chair. “Sylvia, the whole conversation is becoming extremely unpleasant. I must ask you either to stop or let me go out of the room.”
“You needn’t be afraid of any personal revelations,” Sylvia assured her. “I’ve never been in love that way. I only wanted to find out if you had been and ask you about it.”
“Never,” said Gertrude, decidedly. “I’ve certainly never been in love like that, and I hope I never shall.”
“I think you’re quite safe. And I’m beginning to think I’m quite safe, too,” Sylvia added. “However, if you won’t discuss abstract morality in an abstract way, you mustn’t expect me to do so, and the problem of housekeeping returns to the domain of practical morality, where principles don’t count.”
Sylvia decided after this conversation to accept Gertrude as a joke, and she ceased to be irritated by her any longer, though her sister-in-law stayed from Christmas till the end of February. In one way her presence was of positive utility, because Philip, who was very much on the lookout for criticism of his married life, was careful not to find fault with Sylvia while she remained at Green Lanes; it also acted as a stimulus to Sylvia herself, who used her like a grindstone on which to sharpen her wits. Another advantage from Gertrude’s visit was that Philip was able to finish his text, thanks to her industrious docketing and indexing and generally fussing about in his study. Therefore, when Sylvia proposed that the twins should spend their Easter holidays at The Old Farm, he had no objection to offer.
The prospect of the twins’ visit kept Sylvia at the peak of pleasurable expectation throughout the month of March, and when at last, on a budding morn in early April, she drove through sky-enchanted puddles to meet them, she sang for the first time in months the raggle-taggle gipsies, and reached the railway station fully half an hour before the train was due. Nobody got out but the twins; yet they laughed and talked so much, the three of them, in the first triumph of meeting, that several passengers thought the wayside station must be more important than it was, and asked anxiously if this was Galton.
Gladys and Enid had grown a good deal in six months, and now with their lengthened frocks and tied-back hair they looked perhaps older than sixteen. Their faces, however, had not grown longer with their frocks; they were as full of spirits as ever, and Sylvia found that while they still charmed her as of old with that quality of demanding to be loved for the sheer grace of their youth, they were now capable of giving her the intimate friendship she so greatly desired.
“You darlings,” she cried. “You’re like champagne-cup in two beautiful crystal glasses with rose-leaves floating about on top.”
The twins, who with all that zest in their own beauty which is the prerogative of a youth unhampered by parental jealousy, frankly loved to be admired; Sylvia’s admiration never made them self-conscious, because it seemed a natural expression of affection. Their attitude toward Philip was entirely free from any conventional respect; as Sylvia’s husband he was candidate for all the love they had for her, but when they found that Philip treated them as Sylvia’s toys they withheld the honor of election and began to criticize him. When he seemed shocked at their criticism they began to tease him, explaining to Sylvia that he had obviously never been teased in his life. Philip, for his part, found them precocious and vain, which annoyed Sylvia and led to her seeking diversions and entertainment for the twins’ holidays outside The Old Farm. As a matter of fact, she had no need to search far, because they both took a great fancy to Mr. Dorward, who turned out to have an altogether unusual gift for drawing nonsensical pictures, which were almost as funny as his own behavior, that behavior which irritated so many more people than it amused.