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‘Hartley, darling, love, my own love, come with me now, now, we’ll run down the hill to the taxi.’

She shook her head, and drew her arm away. She said something that sounded like ‘I can’t’. The damn dog was still barking.

‘You’re not going to Australia, I won’t let you. Let him go, you stay. Look, the taxi’s down beside the church. I’ll be there in the church, I’ll wait an hour, two hours, make an excuse and come down, we can get away at once. It doesn’t matter about packing, just come. Hartley, don’t stay there with that man. Choose happiness, come to me.’ I took her arm again.

She looked at me as if she were about to cry, but there were no tears. She moved a step back and I released her. ‘Hartley, speak to me—’

She said, but I could scarcely hear her, ‘You haven’t understood—’

‘Hartley, darling, come to me. I’ll be waiting for you, I’ll wait two hours in the church. Or I’ll expect you tomorrow. I’m not going away anywhere, I’ll be at home. You love me, you came to me that night, you told me those things. You must come, it isn’t too late, it’s never too late—’

The sun, the roses, dazzled my eyes. Ben had come back into the hall and I could see him in the shadows beyond Hartley’s head. One moment her face seemed a mask of pain, then, but perhaps it had not really changed, it looked empty, blank. Her big tearless eyes were blank.

Ben said loudly, over Chuffey’s barking, ‘Well, cheerio then.’

I stepped backward, then turned and walked to the gate. After I had gone through the gate I looked back. They were both standing at the door waving. I waved too and began to walk down the hill.

I sat in the church for more than two hours but she did not come. I paid off the taxi man and walked home.

So, I had five weeks. I was not beaten yet. What after all could Hartley say to me, with Ben behind her listening in the kitchen? What had she actually said, what had I said? Already it was fading. At any rate she had the letter, and the letter was clear. It would make a focus for her thoughts.

What on earth was the purpose of that invitation to tea? It had obviously been Ben’s idea. Perhaps Ben had more sense and more subtlety than I had credited him with. He had set a scene where Hartley could see me, quietly and in his presence, for the last time and take a dignified and final farewell. The idea was intelligent and could even be considered humane. It was however an irrelevant device. It was plain that Hartley did not want to go to Australia, that was Ben’s plan. When had he made it? When he first knew that I was in the village, or earlier? Anyway, Hartley would not go. She would jump, at the last moment, into the rescue boat.

I had taken to drinking in the evenings. At any rate, four days had passed and I had been drunk four evenings, on wine of course. I sat long long with the bottle in the kitchen, thinking, until the late midsummer daylight had entirely gone. Again, it was a time to wait, to wait and to reflect. Of course nothing had happened, no telephone call, no letter, nothing. But there would be a sign; Hartley or the gods would give me one.

The weather continued warm. The sea had regained its bejewelled purplish look, inlaid with spotted lines of emerald. It glittered at me as it had done on the first day. There were a few clouds, big lazy chryselephantine clouds that loafed around over the water exuding light. I gazed at them and wondered at myself for being too obsessed to be able to admire the marvels that surrounded me. But knowing how blind I was did not make me see. I sometimes looked for seals, but there were none. I had no heart to go swimming and wondered if I would ever swim again.

I tried not to think about Titus. Perhaps it was just this effort that drove me to drinking. I persistently directed my thought away from him, or busily thought of him in other contexts and relations, as part of other and still living problems. I anxiously and meanly thrust him away and let myself hope that if I could only put him off a little