"I quite agree. People can't realise what they haven't had to go through. I've understood that ever since I read in the paper the day before yesterday that 'two bombs fell close together and one immediately after the other' in a certain quarter of the West End. That was all the paper said about those two bombs." "Why! What do you mean?" "And I understood it when poor old Queen gave me some similar information on the roof." "What _do_ you mean?" "I was between those two bombs when they fell. One of 'em blew me against a house. I've been to look at the place since. And I'm dashed if I myself could realise then what I'd been through." She gave a little cry. Her face pleased him. "And you weren't hurt?" "I had a pain in my side, but it's gone," he said laconically. "And you never said anything to us! Why not?" "Well--there were so many other things...." "G.J., you're astounding!" "No, I'm not. I'm just myself." "And hasn't it upset your nerves?" "Not as far as I can judge. Of course one never knows, but I think not. What do you think?" She offered no response. At length she spoke with queer emotion: "You remember that night I said it was a message direct from Potsdam? Well, naturally it wasn't. But do you know the thought that tortures me? Supposing the shrapnel that killed Queen was out of a shell made at my place in Glasgow!... It might have been.... Supposing it was!" "Con," he said firmly, "I simply won't listen to that kind of talk. There's no excuse for it. Shall I tell you what, more than anything else, has made me respect you since Queen was killed? Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have managed to remind me, quite illogically and quite inexcusably, that I was saying hard things about poor old Queen at the very moment when she was lying dead on the roof. You didn't. You knew I was very sorry about Queen, but you knew that my feelings as to her death had nothing whatever to do with what I happened to be saying when she was killed. You knew the difference between sentiment and sentimentality. For God's sake, don't start wondering where the shell was made." She looked up at him, saying nothing, and he savoured the intelligence of her weary, fine, alert, comprehending face. He did not pretend to himself to be able to fathom the enigmas of that long glance. He had again the feeling of the splendour of what it was to be alive, to have survived. Just as he was leaving she said casually: "Very well. I'll do what you want." "What I want?" "I won't go to Sarah Churcher's." "You mean you'll come as assistant secretary?" She nodded. "Only I don't need to be paid." And he, too, fell into a casual tone: "That's excellent." Thus, by this nonchalance, they conspired to hide from themselves the seriousness of that which had passed between them. The grotesque, pretentious little apartment was mysteriously humanised; it was no longer the reception-room of a furnished flat by chance hired for a month; they had lived in it.