‘That’s right. Poor Judy covered with snow! There you sit, so modest and unassuming. Shall I get you home alive?’ ‘I don’t care.’ She slipped her arm through his, and he gave it a quick friendly pressure and drove on. Now they were before the gates of College. After all they had not driven very far. Time started again with a reluctant painful beat as the car crept in under the archway; and she realized that it was little more than an hour since they had left Martin. It seemed so short now--less than a moment; a pause between a breath and another breath. They sat side by side in the car without moving. ‘I suppose I must go in now,’ she said at last. ‘They’ll still be at Hall.’ He shivered and beat his hands together. She took one and felt it, and it was icy. ‘Your hands. Oh, Roddy! Will you come in and get warm by my fire?’ He seemed to be considering and then said in a stilted way: ‘If I may--just for a minute--I’ve got rather chilled driving without gloves.’ She could find nothing to say. A cold shy politeness had descended on them both. She led the way into the hall and up the stairs. At every step snow fell off them: their shoulders and arms were covered in it. The corridors were silent and deserted, echoing only her light footsteps, and his heavier ones. She heard her tread, and his following after it, marching, marching towards her far-off door. Judith was bringing Roddy, Judith was in sober truth bringing Roddy to her room. If anyone saw her there would be trouble. Somebody--Jennifer perhaps--must have drawn the curtains and heaped the fire in the little room. The warmth drew out the smell of the chrysanthemums; and their heavy golden heads, massed in a blue jar, held mysterious intensity of life in the firelight. She switched on the reading lamp, and all the colours in the room leapt up dimly, secretly: purple, blue and rose-colour glowed around them, half-lit, half obscured. ‘This is rather seductive,’ he said. He sank on his knees by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, looking about him with a faint smile. She came and knelt beside him; and his eyes fastened narrowly on her face. ‘It’s like you: seductive,’ he said softly. ‘Oh, Roddy! Seductive. That’s all it is. I see it now. I hate it. Am _I_ nothing more than that?’ ‘You.... I don’t know what you are. I can’t make you out. You _never_ behave as I think you probably will.’ ‘I’m glad of that.’ ‘Why are you glad?’ ‘Because I believe you ascribe to me the worst motives,--the most ambiguous. You suspect me--you guard yourself against me.’ ‘I don’t, Judy.’ ‘Ah, you do. But you needn’t. I won’t do you any harm. Unless being--very fond of you can do you harm. But I don’t think I’m a _femme fatale_.’ ‘I don’t know what you are. You disturb me very much. You seem to me completely incalculable. Your eyes watch me and watch me. Such marvellous eyes.’ She lifted them to his in a long steady look and remained silent.