“But—look here——” He pushed away his cup and began to speak very fast. “I simply haven’t got any external life at all. I don’t know the names of things a bit—trees and so on—and I never notice places or furniture or what people look like. One room is just like another to me—a place to sit and read or talk in—except,” and here he paused, smiled in a strange naive way, and said, “except this studio.” He looked round him and then at her; he laughed in his astonishment and pleasure. He was like a man who wakes up in a train to find that he has arrived, already, at the journey’s end. “Here’s another queer thing. If I shut my eyes I can see this place down to every detail—every detail. . . . Now I come to think of it—I’ve never realized this consciously before. Often when I am away from here I revisit it in spirit—wander about among your red chairs, stare at the bowl of fruit on the black table—and just touch, very lightly, that marvel of a sleeping boy’s head.” He looked at it as he spoke. It stood on the corner of the mantelpiece; the head to one side down-drooping, the lips parted, as though in his sleep the little boy listened to some sweet sound. . . . “I love that little boy,” he murmured. And then they both were silent. A new silence came between them. Nothing in the least like the satisfactory pause that had followed their greetings—the “Well, here we are together again, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go on from just where we left off last time.” That silence could be contained in the circle of warm, delightful fire and lamplight. How many times hadn’t they flung something into it just for the fun of watching the ripples break on the easy shores. But into this unfamiliar pool the head of the little boy sleeping his timeless sleep dropped—and the ripples flowed away, away—boundlessly far—into deep glittering darkness. And then both of them broke it. She said: “I must make up the fire,” and he said: “I have been trying a new . . .” Both of them escaped. She made up the fire and put the table back, the blue chair was wheeled forward, she curled up and he lay back among the cushions. Quickly! Quickly! They must stop it from happening again. “Well, I read the book you left last time.” “Oh, what do you think of it?” They were off and all was as usual. But was it? Weren’t they just a little too quick, too prompt with their replies, too ready to take each other up? Was this really anything more than a wonderfully good imitation of other occasions? His heart beat; her cheek burned and the stupid thing was she could not discover where exactly they were or what exactly was happening. She hadn’t time to glance back. And just as she had got so far it happened again. They faltered, wavered, broke down, were silent. Again they were conscious of the boundless, questioning dark. Again, there they were—two hunters, bending over their fire, but hearing suddenly from the jungle beyond a shake of wind and a loud, questioning cry. . . .