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By Root 2330 0

to tell from her tone what she felt about Duport. I wondered whether she would leave him and marry me. I had not asked her, and had no clear idea what the answer would be. Certainly, if she did, like Lady Ardglass, she would not be supported in the style to which she had been accustomed. Neither, for that matter, would Mona, if she had indeed gone off with Quiggin, for I felt sure that the final domestic upheaval at the Templers’ had now taken place. Jean had been right. Something about the way Quiggin and Mona walked beside one another connected them inexorably together. ‘Women can be immensely obtuse about all kinds of things,’ Barnby was fond of saying, ‘but where the emotions are concerned their opinion is always worthy of consideration.’

The mist was lifting now, gleams of sunlight once more coming through the clouds above the waters of the Serpentine. Not unwillingly dismissing the financial side of marriage from my mind, as I walked on through the melancholy park, I thought of love, which, from the very beginning perpetually changes its shape: sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes in decline. At present we sailed in comparatively calm seas because we lived from meeting to meeting, possessing no plan for the future. Her abandonment remained; the abandonment that had so much surprised me at that first embrace, as the car skimmed the muddy surfaces of the Great West Road.

But in love, like everything else—more than anything else—there must be bad as well as good; and by silence or some trivial remark she could inflict unexpected pain. Away from her, all activities seemed waste of time, yet sometimes just before seeing her I was aware of an odd sense of antagonism that had taken the place of the longing that had been in my heart for days before. This sense of being out of key with her sometimes survived the first minutes of our meeting. Then, all at once, tension would be relaxed; always, so it seemed to me, by some mysterious force emanating from her: intangible, invisible, yet at the same time part of a whole principle of behaviour: a deliberate act of the will by which she exercised power. At times it was almost as if she intended me to feel that unexpected accident, rather than a carefully arranged plan, had brought us together on some given occasion; or at least that I must always be prepared for such a mood. Perhaps these are inward irritations always produced by love: the acutely sensitive nerves of intimacy: the haunting fear that all may not go well.

Still thinking of such things, I rang the bell of the ground- floor flat. It was in an old-fashioned red-brick block of buildings, situated somewhere beyond Rutland Gate, concealed among obscure turnings that seemed to lead nowhere. For some time there was no answer to the ring. I waited, peering through the frosted glass of the front door, feeling every second an eternity. Then the door opened a few inches and Jean looked out. I saw her face only for a moment. She was laughing.

‘Come in,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s cold.’

As I entered the hall, closing the door behind me, she ran back along the passage. I saw that she wore nothing but a pair of slippers.

‘There is a fire in here,’ she called from the sitting-room.

I hung my hat on the grotesque piece of furniture, designed for that use, that stood by the door. Then I followed her down the passage and into the room. The furniture and decoration of the flat were of an appalling banality.

‘Why are you wearing no clothes?’

‘Are you shocked?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you are.’

‘Surprised, rather than shocked.’

‘To make up for the formality of our last meeting.’

‘Aren’t I showing my appreciation?’

‘Yes, but you must not be so conventional.’

‘But if it had been the postman?’

‘I could have seen through the glass.’

‘He, too, perhaps.’

‘I had a dressing-gown handy.’

‘It was a kind thought, anyway.’

‘You like it?’

‘Very much.’

‘Tell me something nice.’

‘This style suits you.’

‘Not too outré’

‘On the contrary.’

‘Is this how you like me?’

‘Just like this.’

There is, after all, no pleasure like