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By Root 5704 0

head with an uneasy baited look, like an animal being offered something it does not like. Thomas had very dark hair, always brushed very flat, and decidedly-drawn eyebrows, like his father's and Portia's. Like his father's, his expression was obstinate, but with a hint of deep indecision behind. His head and forehead were rather grandly constructed, but at thirty-six his amiable, mobile face hung already loosish over the bony frame. His mouth and eyes expressed something, but not the whole, Of him; they seemed to be cut off from the central part of himself. He had the cloudy, at some moments imperious look of someone conscious of fulfilling his destiny imperfectly; he looked not unlike one of the lesser Emperors. Now, one hand balanced his tumbler on the arm of his chair, the other hung to the floor, as though rather vaguely groping for something lost. There was clearly, at this moment, nothing that Thomas was at all moved to say. The vibration of London was heard through the shuttered and muffled window as though one were half deaf; lamplight bound the room in rather unreal circles; the fire threw its hard glow on the rug. The house held such tense, positive quiet that he and she might have been all alone in it. Portia raised her head, as though listening to this.

She said: "A house is quiet, after a hotel. In a way, I am not used to it yet. In hotels, you keep hearing other people, and in flats you had to be quiet for fear they should hear you. Perhaps that is not so in flats with a big rent, but in our flats we had to be very quiet, or else the landlord jumped out."

"I didn't think the French minded."

"When we took flats, they were in people's villas. Mother liked that, in case something should happen. But lately, we lived in hotels."

"Pretty awful," said Thomas, making an effort.

"It might be if you had ever lived in a house. But Mother and I got fond of it, in some ways. We used to make up stories about the people at dinner, and it was fun to watch people come and go. Sometimes, we got to know some of the other people."

Thomas absently said: "I expect you quite miss all that."

At that, she looked away in such overcome silence that he beat a tattoo on the floor with his hanging-down hand.

He said: "I realise much more than that, of course. It was rotten about your mother—things like that shouldn't happen."

She said with quite surprising control: "It's nice being here with you, though, Thomas."

"I wish we could give you a better time. We could if you were grown-up."

"But by that time perhaps I—"

She stopped, for Thomas was frowning into his empty tumbler, wondering whether to get another drink. Deferring the question, he turned to look doubtfully at the books stacked beside him at elbow-level, at the reviews and magazines balancing on their top. He rejected these after a glance, put his glass down and reached the Evening Standard from the edge of his desk. "Do you mind," he said, "if I just have a look at this?" He frowned at one or two headlines, stopped, put down the paper, went across to his desk and defiantly jabbed a button of the house telephone.

"I say," he said into the receiver, "is St. Quentin living here?... Well, as soon as he does, then.... No, don't do that.... Yes, I suppose I am, rather." He hung up the receiver and looked at Portia. "I suppose I am back rather early," he said.

But she only looked through him, and Thomas felt the force of not being seen.... What she did see was the pension on the crag in Switzerland, that had been wrapped in rain the whole afternoon. Swiss summer rain is dark, and makes a tent for the mind. At the foot of the precipice, beyond the paling, the lake made black wounds in the white mist. Precarious high-upness had been an element in their life up there, which had been the end of their life together. That night they came back from Lucerne on the late steamer, they had looked up, seen the village lights at star-level through the rain, and felt that that was their dear home. They went up, arm-in-arm in the dark, up the steep zigzag, pressing each other's elbows,