"Where did you go?" he asked. "And why?"
"I went to the Cathedral, and my reason was that I simply couldn't stay in the bungalow because the lady below was singing 'Less than the dust.'"
"I know," Peter said grimly. "Just the sort of thing she would sing."
"She sang very well," Jan owned honestly, "but when Fay was first engaged she and Hugo used to sing those songs to each other—it seemed all day long—and this afternoon I couldn't bear it. It seemed such a sham somehow—so false and unreal, if it only led—to this."
"It's real enough while it lasts, you know," Peter remarked in the detached, elderly tone he sometimes adopted. "That sort of thing's all right for an episode, but it's a bit too thin for marriage."
"But surely episodes often end in marriage?"
"Not that sort, and if they do it's generally pretty disastrous. A woman who felt she was less than the dust and rust and weeds and all that rot wouldn't be much good to a man who had to do his job, for she wouldn't do hers, you know."
"Then you, too, think that's the main thing—to do your job?"
"It seems to me it's the only thing that justifies one's existence. Anyway, to try to do it decently."