This was the generation the war had been fought for and now they bandied the word “peace” around glibly as though it were an advertising slogan. They had not experienced a war (“And that’s a good thing,” she heard Sylvie say, “no matter how unsatisfactory they turn out”). They had been handed, in Churchill’s phrase, the title deeds of freedom. What

Ursula thought that she would rather die for Fox Corner than “England.” For meadow and copse and the stream that ran through the bluebell wood. Well, that was England, wasn’t it? The blessed plot.

Time isn’t circular,” she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a… palimpsest.”

Ursula was left to stare at the floral wallpaper. She had never noticed before that the flowers were wisteria, the same flower that grew on the arch over the back porch. This must be what in literature was referred to as “deflowering,” she thought. It had always sounded like a rather pretty word.

it was one of those questions you couldn’t ask in case he were to tell the truth.

“The self-importance of gods,” Millie said, “what a wonderful title for a novel.” Millie, needless to say, wanted to be a writer. Or an artist, or a singer, or a dancer, or an actress. Anything where she might be the center of attention.

“Vanity, thy name is woman,” Derek said with what seemed like a forced joviality. He was not, Ursula noticed, as comfortable in social situations as she had first thought. She smiled at him, feeling a new bond. She was marrying a stranger, she realized. (“Everyone marries a stranger,” Hugh said.)

He had eventually flushed his fugitive sister out from Hôtel d’Alsace in St. Germain, a degenerate endroit, in Hugh’s estimation, the scene of Oscar Wilde’s demise, which said everything you needed to know about the place.

The college had been run by a man called Mr. Carver, a man who was a great disciple of both Pitman’s and Esperanto and who tried to make his “girls” wear blindfolds when they were practicing their touch-typing. Ursula, suspecting there was more to it than monitoring their skills, led a revolt of Mr. Carver’s “girls.” “You’re such a rebel,” one of