He nodded. ‘In Buenos Aires.’

‘Are you glad? To be going back, I mean.’

‘In a way, yes. ‘He moved a little uneasily. ‘I don’t know quite how it will suit Rosalie.’

She wondered if he knew how worried his eyes looked when he said that.

‘Has she said anything about it?’

‘Yes. She’s not at all keen.’ He spoke with obvious reluctance.

Alison wondered dispassionately what on earth was inducing Rosalie to do anything on which she ‘was not at all keen’. She supposed Julian must have a very great deal of money. It never entered her head that any question of affection could be concerned.

‘Will you have to be there long? Couldn’t you perhaps just be engaged until you come back?’ she suggested.

‘No.’ He looked startled and annoyed. ‘It would mean two years at least. And, in any. case, it’s the kind of job where it is essential to be a married man. Socially it’s the most important position on the firm, and there is a great deal of entertaining to be done. An unmarried man couldn’t possibly do what was required. Besides,’ he added starkly, ‘I couldn’t bear to wait for Rosalie all that time.’

Alison stared down at her hands as they lay very still in her lap.

‘You’re terribly in love with her, aren’t you?’ she said simply.

He flushed a little.

‘Yes. Desperately,’ he said, and looked at her almost resentfully.

She was silent, thinking that ‘desperately’ was probably literally correct.

After a minute he spoke again. ‘I know. You’re wondering why, aren’t you? You can’t understand it because you don’t like her yourself?’

She still said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.

‘It isn’t that I’m blind to anything like her-her unkindness to you.’ He spoke slowly and unhappily. Then he rolled over suddenly and dropped his head on his arms with a sort of angry despair. ‘It doesn’t seem to make any difference,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘I’m just as crazy about her. I don’t expect you could understand.’

‘Yes, I think I do.’ And, just for the moment, Alison put out her hand and touched the tumbled dark head, but so very, very lightly that he couldn’t possibly have known.

He looked up presently and smiled.

‘I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous to tell you all this.’

‘No, it isn’t. One has to tell someone these things sometimes,’ Alison said gravely.

He sighed impatiently. Then he took her hand absently and began to play with her fingers. ‘It’s so easy to tell you, Alison. You keep so still and don’t make idiotic exclamations when one says impossible things.’

She smiled slightly. ‘But I like it when you tell me things about yourself-impossible or otherwise.’

‘You’re very comforting,’ he told her with a little smile.

And she thought, ‘I wish I could put my arms round you and hold you and comfort you properly.’

But she couldn’t, of course. So. she said nothing, and presently, when he spoke again, it was not about himself and Rosalie.

‘What are your uncle and aunt’s plans for your future, Alison?’

Alison shrugged.

‘Uncle doesn’t approve of girls working, and says he is only too happy to give me a home. Aunt Lydia quite approves of my working, so long as I do it for her and don’t expect any sort of payment. It’s rather a vicious circle.’

Julian looked disturbed.

‘Probably your aunt will take you about much more, and treat you more like a daughter, when Rosalie is married.’

‘I dare say.’

Alison thought how pointless all that would be-when Rosalie was married.

‘In which case you’re certain to get married.’ Julian was calmly following out the line of Alison’s future.

‘Perhaps nobody will ask me,’ she said lightly, because it hurt rather to have him say these things.

He laughed a little.

‘That’s the real Victorian Alison speaking,’ he said, and his tone was as light as hers. ‘I imagine half the girls of today do most of the asking themselves. But you’re much too attractive ever to have to resort to that.’

He spoke with sincerity, but so impersonally that Alison gritted her teeth.

‘In a minute he’ll tell me I shall make a marvellous wife for some lucky man,’ she thought grimly.

And’ so that he shouldn’t, she jumped to her feet and said, ‘Don’t you think it is time we were getting back?’

He agreed lazily, and they slowly made their way back to the farm.

The woman asked if they had had a nice walk, and, when they said they had, she added understandingly that the woods were ‘grand for sweethearting’.

‘I’m sure they are,’ Julian said gravely. But Alison said nothing-just went a little pale. She wished she could have blushed instead. It would have made her look silly, of course, but at least it would have kept things on a lighter plane.

As it was,’ Julian suddenly seemed to notice, and said, ‘Alison, you’re tired. I must have let you walk too far.’

‘No, I’m all right,’ she assured him But for a moment she savoured even this perfunctory concern with pleasure.

And perhaps it was not so perfunctory, really. For he saw to it that she made a good tea, and then afterwards he settled her comfortably in the car, with cushions behind her and a light rug over her knees.

She lay back quite silent, content in the memory that he found her ‘a very restful little presence’ like that. And as they slipped past the fields and orchards once more in the lengthening shadows of the evening, she felt at peace again -even though her one day was nearly over.

A few golden stars were just beginning to prick their way through the evening sky as the car drew up at her uncle’s house.

Julian helped her out and stood with her on the pavement for a moment to say good night.

‘Won’t you come in?’ Alison asked.

But he said no, he had a supper engagement and was already late.

‘It’s been so beautiful,’ she began, and then she suddenly found great difficulty in going on. ‘I wish I could tell you-’ She bit her lip. Then she added in a low voice, ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

‘My dear child’-he took her hand kindly-’you really mustn’t make so much of it. I too have to thank you for a delightful day.’

Alison looked up and smiled then, her composure quite restored.

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it too.’

He stood watching her as she ran up the steps. Then, as she turned, with her key in the door, he just raised his hand in farewell, and got into the car and drove away.

‘It’s over,’ thought Alison, and went into the house.

To her surprise, her aunt called to her from the dining-room.

‘Is that you, Alison?’

‘Yes, Aunt Lydia.’ Alison went reluctantly towards the room. Neither her aunt nor Rosalie had been expected back until the next day.

‘Where have you been, my dear?’ They both looked up with some curiosity as Alison came in.

And all at once Alison felt very much afraid of the real answer to that question. But it would be absurd, of course, to make any mystery about it. So she said, as naturally as possible, ‘I’ve been out driving with Julian.’

‘With whom?

‘With Mr. Tyndrum;’ Alison corrected herself nervously under her aunt’s amazed scrutiny.

‘Really, Alison?’ Aunt Lydia ’s manner was very cool and collected now. ‘How did that come about?’

‘It was quite by chance, Aunt Lydia.’ She wished it didn’t sound so absurdly like justifying herself. ‘He rang up yesterday because he had left his cigarette-case here. Then, when he found I was on my own and not doing anything today, he asked me if I’d like to go driving. I suppose he was just-just at a loose end.’

‘I suppose he was,’ said Rosalie, and that was her sole contribution to the conversation.

‘Well, you’d better have something to eat now,’ her aunt observed.

So Alison had a very uncomfortable and rather silent supper, and thought how different everything tasted from the other meals she had had that day.