She liked Roddy and did not love him—nothing could alter that.
Breton and she belonged to a world that was hostile to this world that she was now in—nothing could alter that.
Yes, she would go and see Breton. She got up, smiled at Lady Darrant and went across the room to talk to Uncle John.
On this afternoon she had a great overpowering longing for someone to love her, to care for her, to pity her, to take her into their arms and whisper comfort to her. It was so long—oh! so long, since Dr. Chris and Uncle John had done that.
And yet—the irony of it—there was Roddy eager to do it all: and from him, the fates had decreed that it should mean nothing to her.
"Why can't he touch me? Why can't he give me what I want? Is it my fault? Whose fault is it?"
And when she came to Uncle John she was almost afraid to look at him lest he should see the unhappiness in her eyes.
But, in spite of her unhappiness, she could be satirically observant. Her grandmother, up there on the wall, controlled, like the moon, this tide of human beings. They flowed forward, they retreated. About them, around them, behind and in front of them hovered this War....
Rachel knew that it was the Beaminster doctrine that anything that occurred to the nation was to be attributed, in the main, to Beaminster principles. She could tell at once that they had seized upon this war as an example of Beaminster government. Had diplomacy prevented it, behold the triumph of Beaminster diplomacy; now, as it had not been prevented, a swift and total triumph would assert the genius of Beaminster militancy.
"A week out there ought to be enough.... It's tiresome, of course, but they'll soon have had enough of it...."