"I look like mother to-day.... I am like mother...."
So youth and beauty were to leave her, too. She would recover from this illness and this extinguishing of charm, but not completely, and not for long. Middle age had begun. She would have off days in future, when she would look old and worn instead of always, as hitherto, looking charming. She wouldn't, in future, be sure of herself; people wouldn't be sure to think "A lovely woman, Mrs. Rodney Bendish." Soon they would be saying "How old Mrs. Bendish is getting to look," and then "She was a pretty woman once."
Well, looks didn't matter much really, after all....
"They do, they do," cried Neville to the glass, passionately truthful. "If you're vain they do—and I am vain. Vain of my mind and of my body.... Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ... and now the silver cord is going to be loosed and the golden bowl is going to be broken, and I shall be hurt."
Looks did matter. It was no use canting, and minimising them. They affected the thing that mattered most—one's relations with people. Men, for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them. They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk to them: they told them things they would never tell a plain woman. Rodney did. He liked attractive women. Sometimes he made love to them, prettily and harmlessly.
The thought of Rodney stabbed her. If Rodney were to get to care less ... to stop making love to her ... worse, to stop needing her.... For he did need her; through all their relationship, disappointing in some of its aspects, his need had persisted, a simple, demanding thing.
Humour suddenly came back.
"This, I suppose, is what Gerda is anticipating, and why she won't have Barry tied to her. If Rodney wasn't tied to me he could flee from my wrinkles...."
"Oh, what an absurd fuss one makes. What does any of it matter? It's all in the course of nature, and the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep. Middle age will be very nice and comfortable and entertaining, once one's fairly in it.... I go babbling about my wasted brain and fading looks as if I'd been a mixture of Sappho and Helen of Troy.... That's the worst of being a vain creature.... What will Rosalind do when her time comes? Oh, paint, of course, and dye—more thickly than she does now, I mean. She'll be a ghastly sight. A raddled harridan. At least I shall always look respectable, I hope. I shall go down to Gerda. I want to look at something young. The young have their troubles, poor darlings, but they don't know how lucky they are."