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OMG - this book is so dull and uninspired. I feel obligated to finish, but my heart sinks every time I pick it up. NOT her best effort.

Reading this for a challenge, a book set on a holiday, but it's actually an astute and charming story, which has sat neglected on my shelves for too, too long. Reading challenges can take you in such interesting directions!

"But there were also his own inclinations which worried him far more, as he had not yet learnt how to manage them."

GAY CHARACTER ALERT! I wonder if Vita modelled Robin at all on her son Ben? That was my immediate thought when Robin was first introduced. Veiled references (like this one) to a character's sexuality is yet another reason why I love Vita and her novels.

Robin did not like girls, however nice. Women did not attract him: that was the trouble. He greatly preferred the company of his own sex, and was instantly at ease with any man, especially elderly men, who always took a liking to him. There had been unpleasant incidents with which Robin, less innocent than Lucy sweetly supposed, was by now quite competent to deal.

'Walter! That horrible little black book lies above your heart. What do you keep written in it? People's lives? People's agonies? Living things? Nothing to you, except another bit of work to be done. And if you bring off another bit of work successfully, it goes to your credit; if you fail, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best.'

'Oh, what an awful word!' said Juliet, her spirits suddenly reasserting themselves. 'Wedlock! it makes me feel as though I had chains round my wrists and ankles and a great dragging log of wood. Wed-lock! Locked-in! Handcuffs; a shut cell, with a policeman's eye glaring through a peep-hole. Claustrophobia; no privacy; no escape. - I could never endure that, Walter. I like to be free.'

It was a perfect April evening. Small feathers of golden clouds drifted across a sky the colour of a thrush's egg. Down by the lake, the daffodils were now in their plenty; the only ripple on the water came in rings from a leaping fish; a moorhen croaked, invisible.

Houses, some houses, seem to know what is going on. It is their fate to be compelled to contain whatever they are asked to contain, whether happiness or trouble, but the hour passes and the silence returns.