"I've thought a lot about happiness," Caroline continued. "Perhaps because I saw what unhappiness did to Arnold. I've sometimes thought, supposing everybody - every single person- decided to do their level best to to make one small corner of the world happer. Would that help?" She spread out a wrinkled pillow-slip as she spoke and smoothed it skillfully.

"Like that," he said.

She smiled. "You mean ironing out the wrinkles. That's easy."

"If you know how."

"I know how to iron out wrinkles," she admitted, folding the linen carefully. "If everybody did what could . . . made a little happiness here and there, just to start with . . . and then the circles would spread until they touched and merged."

"Everything ironed out."

She took Leda's tennis shorts and spread them on the board. "It isn't impossible," she pleaded. "It isn't impossible if we started to go about it in the right way. We're going about it in the wrong way. Passing laws and trying to make people happy and good. . . there's only one way in which it can be done, and that's from inside outwards; starting with the individual and spreading outwards to others. Some people have power in them and could do a lot, others could just do a little, but everybody could do something . . . even if they just made one house a happy place."