‘It’s far too long since I last saw you. Why didn’t I come to see you at College? Or write to you? I meant to.’ ‘Why not indeed?... Because you forgot about me.’ ‘I never forgot about you, Judy. You were always in the back of my mind. But life was very full.... And I wanted to wait.’ He gave her a quick glance, whose meaning she did not pause to interpret. She said hurriedly: ‘I am glad life was full. You have been happy, haven’t you? Tell me about these three years.’ ‘They haven’t been--outwardly--dramatic,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s been ill-health, and again ill-health for me.’ ‘Oh, poor Julian!’ She took up his hand and pressed it for a moment; and her eyes started with tears. She had forgotten the asthma which had hollowed his always hollow cheeks, ploughed deeper the lines about the mouth, lifted and bowed the always high stooping shoulders. ‘It’s all right,’ he said rather awkwardly. ‘It’s given me a good excuse for never doing anything I didn’t want to do. These years since the war have been an uninterrupted succession of self-indulgences. I was happy in a way at Oxford. But I only stayed a year. It didn’t do really. The locust-eaten years behind me were too strong. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t play. I was too old altogether. But the gentleness of people, the peace, the beauty!--all that was very comforting. I took to my music again, a little.... But, as I say, it wasn’t any good trying to recapture what I had once found there. And then of course the climate did me in. So I came down,--a physical wreck, but more or less sane again. Since then I have been in France, Switzerland, Austria--all over Europe. I have composed a ballet which will never be performed. I have written three songs. I have contributed pseudo-highbrow criticism of modern music to several periodicals. I have listened--oh, listened very happily to a great deal of music in a great many countries. I have had a Russian mistress, and a French and an Austrian. I think that was all.’ He gave her a quick look as if to see what effect this announcement had upon her; but her face remained unmoved. Julian’s passions had always been an uninteresting if not distasteful subject for speculation. ‘And I got tired of them all and treated them monstrously and left them. They seemed to me quite insupportable after a bit--so stupid. I have tried in vain to be cured of asthma at the inept hands of countless doctors. I have read a lot--and talked more, as you may guess. I have spent and still spend much time looking for someone to whom I might attach myself permanently. But that of course is the most tiresome romantic folly. Nobody could love me for long: I know that well. And I daresay I myself am incapable of anything except a little passing lust. In short, Judy, you see in me what is known as a waster. It’s in the family I’m afraid. Roddy’s another. Charlie was designed for one from birth.... But he’d have been a happy one, poor boy.... Whereas my conscience pricks.’ He