What was thirty-nine? A time-feeling, a feeling she hadn't got. If you haven't got the feeling you are not thirty-nine. You can be any age you please, twenty-nine, nineteen.
But she had been horribly old at nineteen. She could remember what it had felt like, the desperate, middle-aged sadness, the middle-aged certainty that nothing interesting would ever happen. She had got hold of life at the wrong end.
And all the time her youth had been waiting for her at the other end, at the turn of the unknown road, at thirty-nine. All through the autumn and winter Richard Nicholson had kept on writing. Her poems would be out on the tenth of April.
On the third the note came.
"Shall I still find you at Morfe if I come down this week-end?—R.N."
"You will never find me anywhere else.—M.O."
"I shall bike from Durlingham. If you've anything to do in Reyburn it would be nice if you met me at The King's Head about four. We could have tea there and ride out together.—R.N."
II.
"I'm excited. I've never been to tea in an hotel before."
She was chattering like a fool, saying anything that came into her head, to break up the silence he made.