Oliver’s life, which ended when he was nearly fifty, was a long and sullen frustration in work and in love. He had been drowned while staying in Cornwall with his family, and his old father had ever afterwards tried not to think that he might have committed suicide. He was certainly unhappier as he grew older, and had begun to drink heavily.

Fortunately for his wife, she was extremely stupid and the suspicion did not occur to her. When he died, her natural, commonplace cheerfulness bubbled up, and she began to enjoy her life. For twenty years all her little ordinary pleasures had been spoiled by his silences, angers and sudden disgusts, and by his contempt. She had been at first fascinated by him, then afraid, and finally impatient and indifferent; and though of course it was dreadful that poor Oliver was dead, things were certainly much pleasanter now that he was.

Oliver’s life had been dull and bitter; Hartley’s had been terrible.

The violence in the elder Garden men called for its complement, a yielding weakness in women. They married gentle, small women whose lives they made miserable, but Hartley came against an unfamiliar quality when he chose Ethel Parry for his wife. She was a small dark girl, pretty as a cherry or a little red rose, and she had a sense of humour.

None of the Garden men had; and neither had poor Auntie Grace (Uncle Oliver’s widow) and poor Uncle Tom, Aunt Maxine’s husband, who was dead. Auntie Loo had one which she carefully suppressed, and it was said that Grandmother Mary had had one, but she died long ago and none of her sons liked to recall that Mamma used to laugh at them when they got into tempers. Mamma’s memory, naturally, was as solemn as it was sacred.

But Ethel’s sense of humour was part of her saneness and her natural wisdom. Even twenty years of being married to an unhappy neurotic could not kill it; she passed it on to her three children and it helped to save them from becoming ‘typical Gardens.’ They hated the thought of becoming typical Gardens worse than anything in the world, and refused to admit that there were some fine qualities in the Gardens, who had superb vitality, were adventurous and responded with quick ardour to beauty. When ageing second-cousins-twice-removed tottered up to Sophia and announced, after peering at her, that she was ‘exactly like her poor father, isn’t she, Preston?’ Sophia became coldly furious and stunned the well-meaning women by saying brusquely, ‘I’m sorry to hear it. I don’t want to be.’ And she and Francis envied Harry because he looked like their mother.

When Sophia first heard of the girl who was born under a dancing star, she thought at once of her mother, who had, for weapons against a terrible existence, humour, courage and faith in the hidden goodness of life.

Mrs Garden had no wealthy and powerful relatives to help her to get a divorce, even if she had wanted one. Her family consisted of two or three small, merry, very affectionate people like herself, who were alternately amused by, and terrified of, the large passionate Gardens with their solemnities and their appetite for rows. The Parrys kept out of the way; but sometimes Mrs Garden would slip down to visit them at Portsmouth, where they had lived for many years, and as soon as her little unmarried sister opened the door, and held out loving arms to her, she would step for a few hours into her happy girlhood again, and almost forget the monotonous misery which lay in wait for her in London.