‘I don’t think you could!’ She wanted to strike him for his cold-blooded self-assurance. ‘If you think you could--manage her, control her, I pity you, that’s all! I’d like to see you try! You’d think you’d got her easily--and then in another moment she’d have slipped through your fingers.... How I’d laugh!... Personally I didn’t need to make her like me: she just did.’ She felt that she was speaking wildly, and fell silent, weak before the flooding onslaught of the past. It was too much pain. What was the use of trying to go on? You could never get free of the past. It came all around again at a word, and in a trice all save its shadows was trivial and insubstantial. Julian was watching her; raising his eyebrows in a pretense of polite surprise and watching closely. ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Calm yourself, my serpent. You have convinced me my best endeavours would be wasted.’ She hid her face, stooping it over the table with both hands across her forehead, feeling the nausea and sweat of faintness. He helped himself to grapes and remarked: ‘Not that I shan’t be sorry never to see her on a horse again. She looked magnificent.’ ‘Oh, yes! She....’ Still with her face hidden she added, summoning a faint but steady voice: ‘I’d go to her now, this minute, if I knew where she was. But I don’t.’ There was a silence; and then he said gently: ‘I’ll find her for you if you like, my dear.’ She stretched a hand across the table to him. ‘No. Help me forget her ... and everything else....’ He stroked the hand; and without a word left her, to pay the bill. When he came back she was able to raise a calm and smiling face to him. * * * * * The stars were out when they took the road again, and the coming dark flowered like a field of pansies. ‘Hadn’t we better go home now, Julian?’ ‘No. I’m not going to take you home yet.’ She sat beside him, silent and dully apprehensive. ‘It’s a pity you’re so unhappy,’ said Julian. ‘I think I said so before.’ She made no answer. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool to take on like this.’ Silence. ‘You’re simply destroying yourself over it and it can’t be worth it. Why don’t you tell me about it? I’ll be nice.’ She shook her head. ‘Do tell me, darling. You know, things have a way of swelling to monsters if we lock them up inside us. You see if you won’t feel better after you’ve once got it out of you.’ He spoke like a kindly father, and put an arm round her. ‘I’m in love with someone,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all. I thought it was finished.... Oh, dear, dear, dear, how awful!...’ She drew deep choking breaths. ‘Poor devil,’ he said. ‘You needn’t be sorry.’ She collected herself. ‘It’s good for me. Besides, it _is_ finished really: I scarcely ever think of it now.’ ‘Does that yellow-haired female come into it then?’ ‘Jennifer? No. Though she’s gone too ... and that makes it all far worse....’ She added quickly: ‘It’s nobody you know.’