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Steps in the hall behind him made Major Brutt crane round automatically: they were beginning to come out from dinner now. "You must sit down," he said to Portia, unexpectedly sharply. "You don't want all these people staring at you." He pulled another chair close: she sat down, distantly shaken by the outside force of what she had just said. Major Brutt intently watched four other people take their own favourite seats. Portia watched him watch; his eyes clung to these people; their ignorance of what he had had to hear made his fellow hotel guests the picture of sanity. There are moments when one can comfort oneself by a look at the most callous faces—these have been innocent of at least one crime. When he could not look any more without having to meet their looks, he dropped his eyes and sat not looking at Portia. It was she, for the moment, who felt how striking their silence, their nearness here had become—anxiety, and the sense of being pursued by glances still more closely than she had been all day made her sit stone still, not even moving her hands.

There seemed no reason why Major Brutt should ever raise his eyes from the floor: he had begun, in fact, to stroke the back of his head. She interposed, in a low voice: "Is there no other place—?"

He frowned slightly.

"Haven't you got a room here?"

"I've been a pretty blundering sort of fellow."

"Oh, can't we go upstairs? Can't we go somewhere else?"

"I don't know what made me think they would have time for me.... What's that you're saying?"

"Everyone's listening to us."

But that still did not matter. He watched, with an odd grim sort of acquiescence, three more people come between the pillars, sit down. Then older ladies in semi-evening dresses cruised through the hall and upstairs: they were the drawingroom contingent. Major Brutt's grey eyes returned to Portia's dark ones. "No, there's nowhere else," he said. He waited: a conversation broke out at the other end of the lounge. He pitched his voice underneath this. "You'll just have to talk more quietly. And mind what you say—you've no business to talk like that."

She whispered: "But you and I are the same."

"Besides, anyhow," he went on frowning at her, "that doesn't alter—nothing alters—anything. You've got no right to upset them: can't you see that's a low game? I'm going to take you right back—now, pronto, at once."

"Oh no," she said, with startling authority. "You don't know what has happened."

They sat almost knee to knee, at right angles to each other, their two armchairs touching. Their peril, the urgent need to stop him from this mistake, made the lounge, the rest of the world not matter—ruthless as a goddess, she put a small sure hand on the arm of his chair. So he wavered more when he said: "My dear child, whatever's happened, you'd so much better go home and have it out."

"Major Brutt, even if you hated them you couldn't possibly want me to do anything worse. It would never stop at all. Having things out would never slop. I mean. Besides, Thomas is my brother. I can't tell you flown here.... Do you like this hotel?"

Here-adjusted to this in two or three seconds, hummed slowly at her, said: "It suits me all right. Why?"

"If you left tomorrow, what they thought would not matter: you could tell them I was your niece who had got a pain and had got to lie down, then we could talk in your room."

"That would still not do, I'm afraid."

But she interposed: "Oh, quickly! I'm starting to cry.'1 She was: her dilated dark eyes began dissolving; with her knuckles she pressed her chin up to keep her mouth steady; her other fist was pressed into her stomach, as though here were the seat of uncontrollable pain. She moved her knuckles, to mumble: "There've been people all day... I just want half an hour, just twenty minutes.... Then, if you say I must..."

He shot up, knocking a table, making an ash-bowl rattle, saying loudly: "Come, we'll look for some coffee." They went through the diningroom