Ronald had his own ideas about the sailing of the boat, as about most other things in his life, and he infinitely preferred his mother's society to any other, because she was capable of grasping those ideas. He was not a clinging baby, but an an oddly independent one. He had never shown much interest in other children, not even in the smallest Pepoli, who was about his own age. He was obviously happier alone, when he was not with Teresa; and they were very happy together. … Ronald at the worst represented a certain amount of salvage from the wreck.
Yet Teresa had often thought of late that she and Basil might have been happier without children. Their troubles had begun with the coming of Ronald, and as she looked back to the first year of their marriage, it seemed to her to have an extraordinary quality of freedom and joy. It might be true that they could not have gone on like that, that life would have taken its revenge on them somehow for shirking the ordinary lot of care and responsibility. Possibly that sort of happiness, as everyone said, was not meant to last. Perhaps there was something trivial in it, unless one took it simply as a quality of youth, and let it pass, as others did, taking up in their turn the burdens of maturity. There was something in Teresa that echoed to this deeper and more serious note; but there was also a passion-
