"Linda? Well, she's a much better sort than she used to be. I don't know much about women, though I like them well enough. Linda? Oh, she seems happy. She has a house and a piano and a lot of people, goes abroad, little parties of four or five, mixed; musicians and professors, cream of Thrigsby, you know. She wrote a play for the Thrigsby Repertory Theater, all about you and marriage and sex. Rather disgusting, I thought it, but all Thrigsby flocked to see it. All the same, yes, she is nicer. Not so inquisitive; doesn't romance so wildly. The only objection I have to her now is that she will get me into a corner when I'm at home and talk about you. I think she ought to ignore your existence, as it is no longer her affair. She seems unable to do that, and she fancies I know something about you that she doesn't, though I've told her over and over again that I don't pretend to understand you or anybody else. I did tell her that you made me feel that what I wanted to do wasn't necessarily a thing to be ashamed of." "I did that?" "Well, it was only after you came that I was able to tell the mater that I didn't want to do as she wished and couldn't. . . . Where are you living?" René described Ann's two rooms. "Do you like it? I mean, aren't they rather grubby and piggy?" René thought it over with a clear picture in his mind of Ann's room and Jimmy's and Kilner's, and the women standing at the doors and leaning out of the windows, and the children playing in the muck. For him it was all colored emotionally. Moments of distaste he could remember, but nothing like the offended fastidiousness expressed in Kurt's tone. "Well, yes. Untidy and careless. One day's work slops over into the next day. But, you know, my home was not so very unlike that. I used to hate it at home when I got back at night to find my bed unmade. That used to happen." "Can I come and see you? I'm here for a fortnight. My business is up north. Got a factory now. You must come and see it if ever you are----" "I don't think I'm likely to go north again. I feel that's finished. I don't know why. It isn't that I have any hatred for it, or any bitterness about what happened. Only I feel on firmer ground here, as though I had taken root." "I'll come along then. Any night?" "Almost any night." "I'll take my chance." They shook hands, Kurt with a grip that squeezed René's knuckles together until the pain was horrible. "'Member our smash?" asked Kurt.