Mary Olivier: a Life

All her life she had gone wrong about happiness. She had attached it to certain things and certain people: Mamma and Mark, Jenny, visits to Aunt Bella, the coming of Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lavvy and Uncle Victor, the things people would say and do which they had not said and not done: when she was older she had attached it to Maurice Jourdain and to Mark still and Mamma; to going back to Mamma after Dover; to the unknown houses in Morfe; to Maurice Jourdain's coming; then to Mark's coming, to Lindley Vickers. And in the end none of these things had brought her the happiness she had seemed to foresee in them.

She knew only one thing about perfect happiness: it didn't hide; it didn't wait for you behind unknown doors. There were little happinesses, pleasures that came like that: the pleasure of feeling good when you sat with Maggie's sister; the pleasure of doing things for Mamma or Dorsy; all the pleasures that had come through the Sutcliffes. The Sutcliffes went, and yet she had been happy. They had all gone, and yet she was happy.