She turned round then and leaned back, gripping the edge of the draining-board.

“Why did it?”

He laughed.

“One of those things which are so simple that no one believes them. I like the woods at night-I always have. There was a moon, rather fitful between the clouds, and there was a fox- quite a young one-he was amusing to watch. But you can’t expect the police to lap up that sort of thing. Or a jury. More especially if it’s a jury of townsmen. Can’t you hear counsel for the prosecution? ‘Gentlemen, you are asked to believe that the prisoner spent this time, during which the unfortunate Clarice Dean was murdered, in the woods watching a fox!’ ”

She said,

“Edward, please-I can’t bear it!”

He had his darkest look.

“You can bear a lot more than you think you can.”

He went over to the door again and stood with his back against it.

“I haven’t told them yet where I was for the four and a half years I was away, but I shall have to now. They’ll find out, so I had better make a virtue of necessity. I don’t suppose it’s going to do me any good.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Oh, yes. I was in prison.”

She heard herself say “Nonsense!” and was glad that her voice sounded quite firm.

“Well, it was a labour camp. I went into Russia to look for a friend who had gone there to look for his wife-after my historic row with Uncle James. It seemed quite a reasonable thing to do at the time. The girl was Russian, and they wouldn’t let her out, so Mark went in to get her.”

“He must have cared for her-very much.”

He laughed.

“Sentimental, aren’t you!”

A hot anger came up in her. She stamped her foot on the hard stone floor.

“I’m not! People do care like that-sometimes.”

“And it’s love, it’s love, it’s love that makes the world go round! As a matter of hard fact, Mark didn’t get on with his wife, but she was his wife, and he was hanged if he was going to have her dictated to by a bunch of Bolsheviks. Well, he wasn’t hanged, he was shot. After four years in a labour camp.”

“How do you know?”

“I told you. I was there. We escaped together. He was shot. It took me four months to get out of Russia. It was like some filthy nightmare, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Now I shall have to.”

“You can’t just keep everything bottled up-it does things to you.”

He put out a hand.

“Come here, Susan.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you. Just come.”

She came over to him. He linked his hands lightly behind her shoulders.

“You’re a nice child.”

“I’m not a child!”

“ ‘A nice woman’ sounds a bit stodgy, don’t you think? Shall we just say you are nice and leave it at that?”

Her eyes were on his face. What they saw there hurt. She said quite gravely,

“ ‘Nice’ is a bit stodgy too. It sounds like bread and butter.”

“Well, there isn’t anything wrong about bread and butter. A very clean, pleasant, wholesome, and nourishing comestible.”

Her colour rose brightly.

“And I suppose you think anyone is going to like being called wholesome and nourishing!”

“There are worse things. What are your views about kissing? Any conscientious objections?”

“Not when people are fond of each other.”

“Am I fond of you?”

For a moment her heart had beat so hard that she was afraid he would feel it She went on looking at him because she wouldn’t let him see her look away, and said,

“I think so-”

He nodded.

“Nice to have about the place. I expect quite a lot of people have told you that. Well, what about you? Are you fond of me?”

It was unutterably soft and silly, but the tears came into her eyes with a rush. She lifted her face to him and he kissed her.

He had been holding her lightly, but with that first kiss everything was changed. She was caught against him roughly, her heart thudding-or was it his heart that beat so hard against her breast? And his kisses were rough too-vehement and snatched at, as if there was only this one short time for them. The extraordinary thing was that they did not frighten her. Her arms went round his neck and held him close. It was as if they stood in a storm together, but that somewhere in the centre of it there was security. Only she must not let him go. She must never let him go.

In the end it was he who put her away as suddenly as he had caught at her.

“Stupid business,” he said. “I hadn’t any right to do that. I now beg your pardon, and we forget it ever happened.”

She thought the first words shook, but it might only have been that she was shaking so terribly herself. His voice was hard and steady enough at the end. But this couldn’t be the end-not after they had been so close. She tried desperately hard to pull herself together. This was the sort of situation where you must, you simply must, pull something out of the wreck-courage-dignity-self-control. And all at once she didn’t have to try. She saw the bleak pain in his eyes and forgot all about Susan Wayne.

“Yes, we’re stupid,” she said, and her voice sounded all right. “You frightened us both. I don’t believe they are going to arrest you. You didn’t murder those people, and somebody else did. What is the good of the police if they can’t find out who it was?”

“Rhetorical question? Or am I supposed to provide an answer?”

She said,

“I hope they will.”

“Pious child! Let us go on hoping-it will help to pass the time. And now we had better put these tea things away and go back to Emmeline, or she’ll think there is something up.”

CHAPTER XXXI

Susan did not go back into the sitting-room. She slipped on a coat and went out. At first there was just the need to get away, to be out in the dark, and to be alone. If she went to her room she would be almost certain to cry until her face was a mess, and then Edward would know. And it was beyond her to go in and sit there with him and with Emmeline and wonder how soon the police would come.

She turned out of the drive and stood there, undecided whether to go to the right or to the left. After a moment she turned in the direction of the village. She wanted to be alone, but not too much alone. This way there would be a glow behind a curtain, the sound of a wireless programme, the opening and closing of a door, the passing of someone, who might be anyone, in the dark.

She tried to think steadily of what had happened between her and Edward. He wasn’t in love with her-why should he be? He was fond of her in the same sort of way that you are fond of your relations, or even of a dog, or of a cat. He found her pleasant, and he liked having her about. And he was all starved inside. Loneliness and unhappiness, and all the things that had come and gone in those last years. He had just grabbed at her the way people do grab when they are starving. It wasn’t anything more than that, and as far as she was concerned, better face it and have done. If there was anything that was the slightest use or help to him-well, all she wanted was to let him have it. She wouldn’t have come to Greenings if she had not thought that she had got over loving him, but she had only to see him again, and there it was, just as bad as ever. If everything had been going all right for him, she might just have had enough decency to keep it down. But what can you do when you see someone starving? You don’t say, “I don’t care if you do,” and go decently and self-respectingly by on the other side-not if you care so much that the thing which is hurting them is like a twisting knife in your own heart. This horrid simile, which presented itself a good deal too vividly for comfort, caused Susan to rebuke herself for indulging in melodrama. She had always been considered sensible, and she wasn’t behaving sensibly.

She had by this time arrived at Mrs. Alexander’s shop. It was still open. Mrs. Alexander kept easy hours and liked to chat with people whose work was done for the day. Seeing the lighted window, Susan had the prosaic thought that it was touch and go if there would be enough marmalade for breakfast. Emmeline would certainly be grateful if she brought a pot back with her. She lifted the latch and walked in.