Ursula Trent

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921. Excerpt: ... Chapter IV Ways to Freedom WE left Notley on the Friday morning. I see myself again, alone with Julian in the railway carriage that crawls toward Dover. We are silent, both of us, he behind the Daily Mail, I behind the Daily Mirror. We look very nice, so established. I wear a charming coat and skirt of brown tweed threaded with green; a violet silk muffler lies by my side. Julian is delicious in dark blue. His hands are neat, his brown boots shine. We look like a comfortably situated young couple that have been married just long enough to sit alone in a railway compartment and read their papers all the same. But that is not why we both engross ourselves, why we are together and apart. We are preserving the decencies of an indecent situation. We do not love each other any more. We have been like that for a long time, but we didn't know it; now we do. But we go along together because, well, there it is, one can't fly apart like that, even when the bond has gone. We are like the water and the glass which the Japanese acrobat whirls in the air without spilling a drop. We are apart as that water and that glass, but the swing keeps us together. When the force that caught us up ceases to whirl us round at once that glass will be empty. As I turn over the pages, and even manage to smile a little over Haselden, who, using the recent Labor victories, shows me the day of a Labor member's wife, trying to cope with social success, I note a rumor the spring fashion will give us, rather fuller skirts. I thought as much. Pictures of women, society leaders, actresses, and, hullo! Monica and her first baby. Then I come across a picture of a dancer with an upright wig. Suddenly I put the paper down, look at Julian, who does not notice me, and turn away. She is rather like ..".