At Port Said they went ashore. The flank of the ship was an iron precipice. At its foot the launch heaved on a dirty and slowly wallowing sea; between its gunwale and the end of the ship’s ladder a little chasm alternately shrank and expanded. For a sound pair of legs the leap would have been nothing. But Philip hesitated. To jump with his game leg foremost might mean to collapse under the impact of arrival; and if he trusted to the game leg to propel him, he had a good chance of falling ignominiously short. He was delivered from his predicament by the military gentleman who had preceded him in the leap.

‘Here, take my hand,’ he called, noticing Philip’s hesitation and its cause.

‘Thanks so much,’ said Philip when he waa safely in the launch.

‘Awkward, this sort of thing,’ said the other. ‘Particularly if one’s short of a leg, what?’

‘Very.’

‘Damaged in the War?’

Philip shook his head. ‘Accident when I was a boy,’ he explained telegraphically, and the blood mounted to his cheeks. ‘There’s my wife,’ he mumbled, glad of an excuse to get away. Elinor jumped, steadied herself against him; they picked their way to seats at the other end of the launch.

‘Why didn’t you let me go first and help you over?’ she asked.

‘I was all right,’ he answered curtly and in a tone that decided her to say no snore. She wondered what was the matter. Something to do with his lameness? Why was he so queer about it?

Philip himself would have found it hard to explain what there was in the military gentleman’s question to distress him. After all there was nothing in the least discreditable in having been run over by a cart. And to have been rejected as totally unfit for military service was not in the least unpatriotic. And yet, quite unreasonably, the question had disturbed him, as all such questions, as any too overt reference to his lameness, unless deliberately prepared for by himself, invariably did.

Discussing him with Elinor, ‘Philip was the last person,’ his mother had once said, ‘the very last person such an accident ought to have happened to. He was born far away, if you know what I mean. It was always too easy for him to dispense with people. He was too fond of shutting himself up inside his own private silence. But he might have learned to come out more, if that horrible accident hadn’t happened. It raised an artificial barrier between him and the rest of the world. It meant no games, to begin with; and no games meant fewer contacts with other boys, more solitude, more leisure for books. And then (poor Phil!) it meant fresh causes for shyness. A sense of inferiority. Children can be so horribly ruthless; they used to laugh at him sometimes at school. And later, when girls began to matter, how I wish he’d been able to go to dances and tennis parties! But he couldn’t waltz or play. And of course he didn’t want to go as an onlooker and an outsider. His poor smashed leg began by keeping him at a physical distance from girls of his own age. And it kept him at a psychological distance, too. For I believe he was always afraid (secretly, of course, and without admitting it) that they might laugh at him, as some of the boys did; and he didn’t want to run the risk of being rejected in favour of someone who wasn’t handicapped as he was. Not that he’d ever have taken very much interest in girls,’ Mrs. Quarles had added.

And Elinor had laughed. ‘I shouldn’t imagine so.’

‘But he wouldn’t have got into such a habit of deliberately avoiding them. He wouldn’t have so systematically retired from all personal contacts—and not with girls only; with men, too. Intellectual contacts—those are the only ones he admits.’

‘It’s as though he only felt safe among ideas,’ Elinor had said.

‘Because he can hold his own there; because he can be certain of superiority. He’s got into the habit of feeling afraid and suspicious outside that intellectual world. He needn’t have. And I’ve always tried to reassure him and tempt him out; but he won’t let himself be tempted, he creeps back into his shell.’ And after a silence, ‘it’s had only one good result,’ she had added, ‘the accident, I mean. It saved him from going to the War, from being killed, probably. Like his brother.’

The launch began to move towards the shore. From being an impending wall of black iron, the liner, as they receded, became a great ship, seen in its entirety. Fixed motionless between the sea and the blue glare of the sky, it looked like the advertisement of tropical cruises in the window of a Cockspur Street shipping office.

‘It was an impertinence to ask,’ Philip was thinking. ‘What business was it of his whether I’d been damaged in the War? How they go on gloating over their War, those professional soldiers! Well, I can be thankful I kept out of the bloody business. Poor Geoffrey!’ He thought of his dead brother.

‘And yet,’ Mrs. Quarles had concluded after a pause, ‘in a certain sense I wish he had gone to the War. Oh, not for fire-eating patriotic reasons. But because, if one could have guaranteed that he wouldn’t have been killed or mangled, it would have been so good for him—violently good, perhaps; painfully good; but still good. It might have smashed his shell for him and set him free from his own prison. Emotionally free; for his intellect’s free enough already. Too free, perhaps, for my old-fashioned taste.’ And she had smiled rather sadly. ‘Free to come and go in the human world, instead of being boxed up in that indifference of his.’

‘But isn’t the indifference natural to him?’ Elinor had objected.

‘Partly. But in part it’s a habit. If he could break the habit, he’d be so much happier. And I think he knows it, but can’t break it himself. If it could be broken for him… But the War was the last chance. And circumstances didn’t allow it to be taken.’

‘Thank heaven!’

‘Well, perhaps you’re right.’

The launch had arrived; they stepped ashore. The heat was terrific, the pavements glared, the air was full of dust. With much display of teeth, much flashing of black and liquid eyes, much choreographic gesticulation, an olive-coloured gentleman in a tarboosh tried to sell them carpets. Elinor was for driving him away. But,’don’t waste energy,’ said Philip. ‘Too hot. Passive resistance, and pretend not to understand.’

They walked on like martyrs across an arena; and like a hungry lion, the gentleman in the tarboosh frisked round them. If not carpets, then artificial pearls. No pearls? Then genuine Havana cigars at three-halfpence each. Or a celluloid comb. Or imitation amber. Or almost genuine gold bangles. Philip continued to shake his head.

‘Nice corals. Nice scarabs—real old.’ That winning smile was beginning to look like a snarl.

Elinor had seen the drapery shop she was looking for; they crossed the street and entered.

‘Saved!’ she said. ‘He daren’t follow. I had such a horrible fear that he might suddenly begin to bite. Poor wretch, though. I think we ought to buy something.’ She turned and addressed herself to the assistant behind the counter.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Philip, foreseeing that Elinor’s shopping would be interminably tedious, ‘I’ll go and get a few cigarettes.’

He stepped out into the glare. The man in the tarboosh was waiting. He pounced, he caught Philip by the sleeve. Desperately, he played his last trump.

‘Nice postcards,’ he whispered confidentially and produced an envelope from his breast-pocket. ‘Hot stuff. Only ten shillings.’

Philip stared uncomprehending. ‘No English,’ he said and limped away along the street. The man in the tarboosh hurried at his side.

‘Tres curieuses,’ he said. ‘Tres amusantes. Moeurs arabes. Pour passer le temps a bord. Soixante francs seulement.’ He saw no answering light of comprehension. ‘Molto artistiche,’ he suggested in Italian. ‘Proprio curiose. Cinquanta franchi.’ He peered in desperation into Philip’s face; it was a blank. ‘Huebsch,’ he went on,’sehr geschlechtlich. Zehn mark.’ Not a muscle moved. ‘Muy hermosas, muy agraciadas, mucho indecorosas.’ He tried again. ‘Skon bref kort. Liderlig fotografi bild. Nakna jungfrun. Verklig smutsig.’ Philip was evidently no Scandinavian. Was he a Slav? ‘Sprosny obraz,’ the man wheedled. It was no good. Perhaps Portuguese would do it. ‘Photographia deshonesta,’ he began.

Philip burst out laughing. ‘Here,’ he said, and gave him half a crown. ‘You deserve it.’

‘Did you discover what you wanted?’ asked Elinor when he returned.

He nodded. ‘And I also discovered the only possible basis for the League of Nations. The one common interest. Our toothy friend offered me indecent postcards in seventeen languages. He’s wasting himself at Port Said. He ought to be at Geneva.’



‘Two ladies to see you, sir,’ said the office boy.

‘Two?’ Burlap raised his dark eyebrows. ‘Two?’ The office boy insisted. ‘Well, show them up.’ The boy retired. Burlap was annoyed. He was expecting Romola Saville, the Romola Saville who had written,

‘Already old in passion, I have known

All the world’s lovers since the world began;

Have held in Leda’s arms the immortal Swan;

And felt fair Paris take me as his own.’

And she was coming with a duenna. It wasn’t like her. Two ladies…

The two doors of his sanctum opened simultaneously. Ethel Cobbett appeared at one holding a bunch of galley proofs. By the other entered the two ladies. Standing on the threshold Ethel looked at them. One of them was tall and remarkably thin. Almost equally tall, the other was portly. Neither of them was any longer young. The thin lady seemed a withered and virgin forty three or four. The portly one was perhaps a little older, but had preserved a full-blown and widowed freshness. The thin one was sallow, with sharp bony features, nondescript brown hair and grey eyes, and was dressed rather fashionably, not in the style of Paris, but in the more youthful and jaunty mode of Hollywood, in pale grey and pink. The other lady was very blonde, with blue eyes, and long dangling earrings and lapis lazuli beads to match. Her style of dressing was more matronly and European than the other’s, and numbers of not very precious ornaments were suspended here and there all over her person and tinkled a little as she walked.

The two ladies advanced across the room. Burlap pretended to be so deeply immersed in composition that he had not heard the opening of the door. It was only when the ladies had come to within a few feet of his table that he looked up from the paper on which he had been furiously scribbling—with what a start of amazement, what an expression of apologetic embarrassment! He sprang to his feet.

‘I’m so sorry. Forgive…I hadn’t noticed. One gets so deeply absorbed.’ The n’s and m’s had turned to d’s and b’s. He had a cold.’so idvolved id ode’s work.’

He came round the table to meet them, smiling his subtlest and most spiritual Sodoma smile. But, ‘Oh God!’ he was inwardly exclaiming. ‘What appalling females!’

‘And which,’ he went on aloud, smiling from one to the other,’ which, may I venture to ask, is Miss Saville?’

‘Neither of us,’ said the portly lady in a rather deep voice, but playfully and with a smile.

‘Or both, if you like,’ said the other. Her voice was high and metallic and she spoke sharply, in little spurts, and with an extraordinary and vertiginous rapidity. ‘Both and neither.’

And the two ladies burst into simultaneous laughter. Burlap looked and listened with a sinking heart. What had he let himself in for? They were formidable. He blew his nose; he coughed. They were making his cold worse.

‘The fact is,’ said the portly lady, cocking her head rather archly on one side and affecting the slightest lisp, ‘the fact ith…’

But the thin one interrupted her. ‘The fact is,’ she said pouring out her words so fast that it was extraordinary that she should have been able to articulate them at all, ‘that we’re a partnership, a combination, almost a conspiracy.’ She uttered her sharp shrill laugh.

‘Yeth, a conthpirathy,’ said the portly one lisping from sheer playfulness.

‘We’re the two parts of Romola Saville’s dual personality.’

‘I being the Dr. Jekyll,’ put in the portly one, and both laughed yet once more.

‘A conspiracy,’ thought Burlap with a growing sense of horror. ‘I should think it was!’

‘Dr. Jekyll, alias Ruth Goffer. May I introduce you to Mrs. Goffer?’

‘While I do the same for Mr. Hyde, alias Miss Hignett?’

‘While together we introduce ourselves as the Romola Saville whose poor poems you said such very kind things about.’

Burlap shook hands with the two ladies and said something about his pleasure at beefing the authors of work he had so much adbired. ‘But how shall I ever get rid of them?’ he wondered. So much energy, such an exuberance of force and will! Getting rid of them would be no joke. He shuddered inwardly. ‘They’re like steam engines,’ he decided. And they’d pester him to go on printing their beastly verses. Their obscene verses—for that’s what they were, in the light of these women’s age and energy and personal appearance—just obscene. ‘The bitches!’ he said to himself, feeling resentfully that they’d got something out of him on false pretences, that they’d taken advantage of his innocence and swindled him. It was at this moment that he caught sight of Miss Cobbett. She held up her bundle of proofs enquiringly. He shook his head. ‘Later,’ he said to her, with a dignified and editorial expression. Miss Cobbett turned away, but not before he had remarked the look of derisive triumph on her face. Damn the woman! It was intolerable.

‘We were so thrilled and delighted by your kind letter,’ said the stouter of the ladies.

Burlap smiled Franciscanly. ‘One’s glad to be able to do something for literature.’

‘So few take any interest.’

‘Yes, so few,’ echoed Miss Hignett. And speaking with the rapidity of one who tries to say ‘ Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper ‘ in the shortest possible time and with the fewest possible mistakes, she poured out their history and their grievances. It appeared that they had been living together at Wimbledon and conspiring to be Romola Saville for upwards of six years now, and that only on nine occasions in all that time had any of their works been printed. But they hadn’t lost courage. Their day, they knew, would come. They had gone on writing. They had written a great deal. Perhaps Mr. Burlap would be interested to see the plays they had written? And Miss Hignett opened a despatch case and laid four thick wads of typescript on the table. Historical plays they were, in blank verse. And the titles were ‘Fredegond,’ ‘The Bastard of Normandy,’ ‘Semiramis’ and ‘Gilles de Retz.’

They went at last, taking with them Burlap’s promise to read their plays, to print a sonnet sequence, to come to lunch at Wimbledon. Burlap sighed; then recomposing his face to stoniness and superiority, rang for Miss Cobbett.

‘You’ve got the proofs?’ he asked distantly and without looking at her.

She handed them to him. ‘I’ve telephoned to say they must hurry up with the rest.’

‘Good.’

There was a silence. It was Miss Cobbett who broke it, and though he did not deign to look up at her, Burlap could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling.

‘Your Romola Saville,’ she said; ‘that was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it?’

Miss Cobbett’s loyalty to Susan’s memory was the intenser for being forced and deliberate. She had been in love with Burlap herself. Her loyalty to Susan and to that platonic spirituality which was Burlap’s amorous speciality (she believed, at first, that he meant what he so constantly and beautifully said) was exercised by a continual struggle against love, and grew strong in the process. Burlap, who was experienced in these matters, had soon realized, from the quality of her response to his first platonic advances, that there was, in the vulgar language which even his devil hardly ever used,’ nothing doing.’ Persisting, he would only damage his own high spiritual reputation. In spite of the fact that the gitl was in love with him, or even in a certain sense because of it (for, loving, she realized how dangerously easy it would be to betray the cause of Susan and pure spirit and, realizing the danger, braced herself against it), she would never, he saw, permit his passage, however gradual, from spirituality to a carnality however refined. And since he himself was not in love with her, since she had aroused in him only the vague adolescent itch of desire which almost any personable woman could satisfy, it cost him little to be wise and retire. Retirement, he calculated, would enhance her admiration for his spirituality, would quicken her love. It is always useful, as Burlap had found in the past, to have employees who are in love with one. They work much harder and ask much less than those who are not in love. For a little everything went according to plan. Miss Cobbett did the work of three secretaries and an office boy, and at the same time worshipped. But there were incidents. Burlap was too much interested in female contributors. Some women he had actually been to bed with came and confided in Miss Cobbett. Her faith was shaken. Her righteous indignation at what she regarded as Burlap’s treachery to Susan and his ideals, his deliberate hypocrisy, was inflamed by personal feelings. He had betrayed her too. She was angry and resentful. Anger and resentment intensified her ideal loyalty. It was only in terms of loyalty to Susan and the spirit that she could express her jealousy.

The last straw was Beatrice Gilray. The cup of Miss Cobbett’s bitterness overflowed when Beatrice was installed at the office—in the editorial department, what was more, actually doing some of the writing for the paper. Miss Cobbett comforted herself a little by the thought that the writing was only Shorter Notices, which Were quite unimportant. But still, she was bitterly resentful. She was much better educated than that fool of a Beatrice, much more intelligent too. It was just because Beatrice had money that she was allowed to write. Beatrice had put a thousand pounds into the paper. She worked for nothing—and worked, what was more, like mad; just as Miss Cobbett herself had worked, at the beginning. Now, Miss Cobbett did as little as she could. She stood on her rights, never arrived a minute early, never stayed a minute past her allotted time. She did no more than she was paid to do. Burlap was annoyed, resentful, distressed; he would either have to do more work himself or employ another secretary. And then, providentially, Beatrice turned up. She took over all the subediting which Miss Cobbett now had no time to do. To compensate her for the subediting and the thousand pounds he allowed her to do a little writing. She didn’t know how to write, of course; but that didn’t matter. Nobody ever read the Shorter Notices.

When Burlap went to live in Beatrice Gilray’s house, Miss Cobbett’s cup overflowed again. In the first moment of anger she was rash enough to give Beatrice a solemn warning against her tenant. But her disinterested solicitude for Beatrice’s reputation and virginity was too manifestly and uncontrollably tinged with spite against Burlap. The only effect of her admonition was to exasperate Beatrice into sharp retort.

‘She’s really insufferable,’ Beatrice complained to Burlap afterwards, without, however, detailing all the reasons she had for finding the woman insufferable.

Burlap looked Christ-like. ‘She’s difficult,’ he admitted. ‘But one’s sorry for her. She’s had a hard life.’

‘I don’t see that a hard life excuses anybody from behaving properly,’ she rapped out.

‘But one has to make allowances,’ said Burlap, wagging his head.

‘If I were you,’ said Beatrice, ‘I wouldn’t have her in the place; I’d send her away.’

‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ Burlap answered, speaking slowly and ruminatively, as though the whole discussion were taking place inside himself. ‘Not in the circumstances.’ He smiled a Sodoma smile, subtle, spiritual and sweet; once more he wagged his dark, romantic head. ‘The circumstances are rather peculiar.’ He went on vaguely, never quite definitely explaining what the rather peculiar circumstances were, and with a kind of diffidence, as though he were reluctant to sing his own praises. Beatrice was left to gather that he had taken and was keeping Miss Cobbett out of charity. She was filled with a mixed feeling of admiration and pity—admiration for his goodness and pity for his helplessness in an ungrateful world.

‘All the same,’ she said, and she looked fierce, her words were like sharp little mallet taps, ‘I don’t see why you should let yourself be bullied. I wouldn’t let myself be treated like that.’

From that time forward she took every opportunity of snubbing Miss Cobbett and being rude. Miss Cobbett snapped, snubbed and was sarcastic in return. In the offices of the Literary World the war was open. Remotely, but not quite impartially, like a god with a prejudice in favour of virtue—virtue being represented in the present case by Beatrice—Burlap hovered mediatingly above the battle.

The episode of Romola Saville gave Miss Cobbett an opportunity for being malicious.

‘Did you see those two terrifying poetesses?’ she enquired of Beatrice, with a deceptive air of friendliness, the next morning.

Beatrice glanced at her sharply. What was the woman up to? ‘Which poetesses?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Those two formidable middleaged ladies the editor asked to come and see him under the impression that they were one young one.’ She laughed. ‘Romola Saville. That’s how the poems were signed. It sounded so romantic. And the poems were quite romantic too. But the two authoresses! Oh, my goodness. When I saw the editor in their clutches I really felt quite sorry for him. But after all, he did bring it on himself. If he will write to his lady contributors…

That evening Beatrice renewed her complaints about Miss Cobbett. The woman was not only tiresome and impertinent; one could put up with that if she did her job properly; she was lazy. Running a paper was a business like any other. One couldn’t afford to do business on a basis of sentimentality. Vaguely, diffidently, Burlap talked again about the peculiar circumstances of the case. Beatrice retorted. There was an argument.

‘There’s such a thing as being too kind,’ Beatrice sharply concluded.

‘Is there?’ said Burlap; and his smile was so beautifully and wistfully Franciscan, that Beatrice felt herself inwardly melting into tenderness.

‘Yes, there is,’ she rapped out, feeling more hard and hostile towards Miss Cobbett as she felt more softly and maternally protective towards Burlap. Her tenderness was lined, so to speak, with indignation. When she didn’t want to show her softness, she turned her feelings inside out and was angry. ‘Poor Denis,’ she thought, underneath her indignation

‘He really needs somebody to look after him. He’s too good.’ She spoke aloud

‘And you’ve got a shocking cough,’ she said reproachfully with an irrelevance that was only apparent. Being too good, having nobody to look after one and having a cough—the ideas were logically connected. ‘What you need,’ she went on in the same sharp commanding tones, ‘is a good rubbing with camphorated oil and a wad of Thermogene.’ She spoke the words almost menacingly, as though she were threatening him with a good beating and a month on bread and water. Her solicitude expressed itself that way; but how tremulously soft it was underneath the surface!

Burlap was only too happy to let her carry out her tender threat. At halfpast ten he was lying in bed with an extra hot-water bottle. He had drunk a glass of hot milk and honey and was now sucking a soothing lozenge. It was a pity, he was thinking, that she wasn’t younger. Still, she was really amazingly youthful for her age. Her face, her figure—more like twentyfive than thirtyfive. He wondered how she’d behave when finally she’d been coaxed past her terrors. There was something very strange about these childish terrors in a grown woman. Half of her was arrested at the age at which Uncle Ben had made his premature experiment. Burlap’s devil grinned at the recollection of her account of the incident.

There was a tap at the door and Beatrice entered carrying the camphorated oil and the Thermogene.

‘Here’s the executioner,’ said Burlap laughing. ‘Let me die like a man.’ He undid his pyjama jacket. His chest was white and well-covered; the contour of the ribs only faintly showed through the flesh. Between the paps a streak of dark curly hair followed the line of the breastbone.’do your worst,’ he bantered on. ‘I’m ready.’ His smile was playfully tender.

Beatrice uncorked the bottle and poured a little of the aromatic oil into the palm of her right hand. ‘Take the bottle,’ she commanded,’ and put it down.’ He did as he was told. ‘Now,’ she said, when he was stretched out again unmoving; and she began to rub.

Her hand slid back and forth over his chest, back and forth, vigorously, efficiently. And when the right was tired, she began again with the left, back and forth, back and forth.

‘You’re like a little steam engine,’ said Burlap with his playfully tender smile.

‘I feel like one,’ she answered. But it wasn’t true. She felt like almost anything but a steam engine, She had had to overcome a kind of horror before she could touch that white, full-fleshed chest of his. Not that it was ugly or repulsive. On the contrary, it was rather beautiful in its smooth whiteness and fleshy strength. Fine, like the torso of a statue. Yes, a statue. Only the statue had dark little curls along the breastbone and a little brown mole that fluttered up and down with the pulsing skin over the heart. The statue lived; that was the disquieting thing. The white naked breast was beautiful; but it was almost repulsively alive. To touch it…She shuddered inwardly with a little spasm of horror, and was angry with herself for having felt so stupidly. Quickly she had stretched out her hand and begun to rub. Her palm slid easily over the lubricated skin. The warmth of his body was against her hand. Through the skin she could feel the hardness of the bones. There was a bristle of roughness against her fingers as they touched the hairs along the breastbone, and the little paps were firm and elastic. She shuddered again, but there was something agreeable in the feeling of horror and the overcoming of it; there was a strange pleasure in the creeping of alarm and repulsion that travelled through her body. She went on rubbing, a steam engine only in the vigour and regularity of her movements, but, within, how quiveringly and self-dividedly alive!

Burlap lay with his eyes shut, faintly smiling with the pleasure of abandonment and self-surrender. He was feeling, luxuriously, like a child, helpless; he was in her hands, like a child who is its mother’s property and plaything, no longer his own master. Her hands were cold on his chest; his flesh was passive and abandoned, like so much clay, under those strong cold hands.

‘Tired?’ he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her.

She shook her head. ‘I’m as much bother as a sick child.’

‘No bother at all.’

But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. ‘Poor Beatrice!’ he said. ‘All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.’

Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.

‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Now for the Thermogene.’ She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. ‘The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. ‘I’m utterly in your hands.’

‘Well, then, sit up,’ she commanded. He sat up. ‘Hold the wool on to your chest while I pass the bandage round.’ To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.

‘Hold the end a moment while I get a safety-pin.’

Burlap lifted his forehead and drew back. Rather flushed, but still very business-like and efficient, Beatrice was detaching one from a little card of assorted safety pins.

‘Now comes the really difficult moment,’ she said, laughing. ‘You won’t mind if I run the pin into your flesh.’

‘No, I won’t mind,’ said Burlap and it was true; he wouldn’t have minded. He’d have been rather pleased, if she had hurt him. But she didn’t. The bandage was pinned into position with quite professional neatness.

‘There!’

‘What do you want me to do now?’ asked Burlap, greedy to obey.

‘Lie down.’

He lay down. She did up the buttons of his pyjama jacket. ‘Now you must go to sleep as quickly as you can.’ She pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and tucked them in. Then she laughed. ‘You look like a little boy.’

‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?’

The colour came into Beatrice’s cheeks. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. And suddenly she wanted to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and stroke his hair. But she only laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, then hurried out of the room.