A heartening flash of anger enabled Janet to face him with colour in her cheeks.

‘I told you before I don’t like that sort of talk!’

‘But, darling, we’ll have to have linoleum and curtains, and suppose I got them and you said you couldn’t live with them-’

‘I have no intention of living with them.’

His face changed suddenly. His hand caught hers.

‘Haven’t you, Janet – haven’t you?’

‘Why should I?’

His laugh shook a little.

‘Part of the worldly goods I’ll be endowing you with. No, that’s out of date. The last wedding I went to the chap said “share”. Rather a pity, don’t you think? I rather like the sound of that “I thee endow”. A bit archaic of course, but so is marriage.’

‘No one was talking about marriage.’

‘Oh, yes, darling, I was – definitely. I’ve been laying my pay-packet and the linoleum and things at your feet for at least ten minutes. Hadn’t you noticed it?’

She said, ‘No.’ At least she went through the right movements for saying ‘No’, but they didn’t seem to result in any recognizable sound.

Ninian said, ‘Come again!’ still in that laughing, shaking voice. And then all at once his black head was bent down over the hand he was holding and he was kissing it as if he would never let it go.

There was a moment when everything seemed to go round, there was a moment when everything stood still. With the touch of his lips on her hand Janet knew very well that she couldn’t go on saying no. But she could at least stop herself from saying yes. It was, in fact, not really possible to say anything at all.

And then someone spoke on the other side of the screen which divided them from the nook on their right. It was Geoffrey Ford, and he could not have been more than a yard away from them. He said comfortably, ‘Well, no one is going to see us here,’ and a woman laughed.

Janet snatched away her hand, and Ninian presented the unmistakable appearance of a young man who is saying, ‘Damn!’ Not aloud of course, but with a good deal of feeling. On the other side of the screen two people could be heard settling themselves.

Janet got up, collected her bag, and skirted the table. Ninian followed her, put a hand on her arm, and was shaken off. As they emerged into the general gloom, the woman who had laughed said in a low but perfectly distinct voice,

‘I’m not going on like this, and you needn’t think so.’

Chapter Fourteen

Janet woke up in the night. She had been dreaming, and the feel of the dream came with her out of her sleep like water dripping as you come up out of a stream. She sat up in bed and waited for the feeling to go. It was an old dream, but she hadn’t had it for a long time now. It came when her mind was troubled, but she did not know what had troubled it tonight. Didn’t she? Ninian and this talk of all the things she had told herself she must and would forget! In sober earnest, how much of it did he mean? Nothing – something – anything? And what kind of fool would she be to be lured back into the passionate moments, the light uncertainties, the day-in, day-out companionship which had been between them? She had said, ‘Never any more,’ and he had only to look at her and kiss her hand and her heart broke with longing to take him back again.

In the dream she was fording a burn – just a shallow, pleasant thing with the pebbles shining through the brown water and the sun turning them to gold. Only she couldn’t get to the other side, and with every step it was deeper. The water was dark and drumly, and the sun was something she had forgotten long ago. Sometimes she woke then, but once she had waded so deep that the water was up to her mouth and the roaring filled her ears. It hadn’t been so bad as that tonight. The stream had been no higher than her knees, and here she was awake. It could rise no farther now.

She looked at the windows standing open with the curtains drawn back and the shape of them just discernible against the denser blackness of the walls. She slipped out of bed and went barefoot to the right-hand one of the two, feeling her way past the dressing-table which stood between them. The night was still, and warm, and very dark, with a feeling of low cloud and not a leaf that stirred. She knelt down and leaned out with her elbows on the sill. There was an autumn smell abroad. Someone had had a bonfire. There was just the tang of wood-smoke on the air, and there was the scent of all the ripe and ripening things that were coming on to their harvest time. The softness and the silence touched her thought and stilled it. The dream wouldn’t come again. She could stay here for a little while longer and then go back into bed and sleep.

Quite suddenly there was a streak of light across the gravel under the window – a long, thin streak lying crookedly across the path and slanting over the tall musk roses in the bed beyond. It was there, but it did not stay. It moved, ran backwards, and was gone. And then a moment later there it was again, but much farther to the right. The curtains in the room below didn’t quite meet, and someone had just walked across that room with a light. Whoever it was had now gone on through the connecting door to Edna’s own little sitting-room. There chintz curtains veiled the light, and it was no longer a streak but a dull glow upon the path.

Janet got up and went through to the nursery. The windows here were shut, but since they were casements they could be opened without making any sound. She leaned out, and the glow was still there. She looked over her shoulder at the nursery clock with its luminous face. It was between ten minutes and a quarter to two. Edna might have gone down – to get a book – or because she couldn’t sleep. Or Geoffrey. Or Meriel. Or Adriana, for the matter of that, only it really didn’t seem at all likely. No, quite definitely, if Adriana wanted anything in the middle of the night she would send Meeson down for it, and Meeson would expect to be sent. Only Meeson would have everything she wanted for making tea or coffee in the little pantry which was part of Adriana’s suite of rooms. Of course it might be any of the others – or it might be someone who hadn’t any business to be there. She couldn’t just go back to bed and leave it uncertain. Suppose she were to come down in the morning and find that all the silver had been stolen. But it didn’t seem very sensible just to walk in on a burglar by herself. She would have to call Ninian.

As the thought went through her mind, the window below her was opened. It was one of those long glass doors with a handle which controls the bolt. It made a faint sound as it swung wide, and at the same moment the light went out. There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel and a sound of whispering voices. She leaned out over the sill, and she strained to hear what the whispering voices said.

But they were just a rustling murmur. She could not tell whether it was man or woman who was whispering there below. And then the rustlings ran together into the syllables of a single sentence, and still she didn’t know whether it was man or woman who had spoken. First Adriana’s name – suddenly, like water splashing in her face. And then the sentence which she was to go over and over in her mind – and at the end know no more what it meant than she did at the beginning:

‘There’s nothing for anyone as long as she keeps hanging on.’

Someone went away along the path. Janet could hear the footsteps getting fainter, until in the end she could not hear them at all. The flicker of a torch receded with them. When it was quite gone someone stepped back over the sill into Edna’s sitting-room and shut the door. She got up on to her feet and went out into the passage and along to the landing at the head of the stairs. There was a light in the hall below, just a weak bulb, but coming out of the dark like this it seemed much brighter than it really was.