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"She told you I had a little desk?"

"I supposed you would have one."

"Has she often—?"

St. Quentin rolled his eyes up. "Not so far as I know. Don't be at all worried. Just find some new place to keep your book. What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else."

"Thank you," said Portia, dazed. "It is very kind of you." She was incapable of anything past this: her feet kept walking her on inexorably. The conversation had ended in an abyss—impossible to pretend that it had not. Like all shocked people, she did not see where she was—they were well down Marylebone High Street, among the shoppers—from the depth of her eyes she threw wary, unhuman looks at faces that swam towards her, faces looking her way. She was aware of St. Quentin's presence only as the cause of her wish to run down a side street. They had been walking fast, in this dreadful dream, for some time, when he cried loudly: "These lacunae in people!"

"What did you say?"

"You don't ask what made me do that—you don't even ask yourself."

She said, "You were very kind."

"The most unlikely things one does, the most utterly out of character, arouse no curiosity, even in one's friends. One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences. Even you, with that loving nature you have—In a small way I have just ratted on Anna, I have done something she'd never forgive me for, and you, Portia, you don't even ask why. Consciously, and as far as I can see quite gratuitously, I have started what may make a frightful breach. In me, this is utterly out of character: I'm not a mischievous man; I haven't got time;

I'm not interested enough. You're not even listening, are you?"

"I'm sorry, I—"

"I've no doubt you're upset. So you and I might be at different ends of the world. Stop thinking about your diary and your Anna and listen to me—and don't flinch at me, Portia, as though I were an electric drill. You ought to want some key to why people do what they do. You think us all wicked—"

"I don't, I—"

"It's not so simple as that. What makes you think us wicked is simply our little way of keeping ourselves going. We must live, though you may not see the necessity. In the long run, we may not work out well. We attempt, however, to be more civil and kindly than we feel. The fact is, we have no great wish for each other—no spontaneous wish for each other, that is to say. This lack of gout makes us have to behave with a certain amount of policy. Because I quite like Anna, I overlook much in her, and because she quite likes me she overlooks much in me. We laugh at each other's jokes and we save each other's faces—When I give her away to you, I break an accepted rule. This is not often done. It takes people in a lasting state of hysteria, like your friend Eddie, for instance, or people who feel they have some higher authority (as I've no doubt Eddie feels he has) to break every rule every time. To keep any rule would be an event for him: when he breaks one more rule it is hardly interesting—at least, not to me. I simply cannot account for his fascination for Anna—"

"Does he fascinate Anna?"

"Oh, palpably, don't you think? I suppose the deduction is that she really must have a conventional mind. And of course he has some pretty ways—No, with me there has to be quite a brainstorm before I break any rule, before speaking the truth. Love, drink, anger—something crumbles the whole scene: at once one is in a fantastic universe. Its unseemliness and its glory are indescribable, really. One becomes a Colossus.... I still don't know, all the same, what made that happen just now. It must be this close spring weather. It's religious weather, I think."

"You think she's told Eddie about my diary, then?"

"My dear, don't ask me what they talk about—Why turn down here?"

"I always go through this graveyard."

"The futility of