He laughed at her again, with mocking humour.

‘But why are you in a bad temper?’ she asked. ‘Do you mean you are ALWAYS in a bad temper?’

‘Pretty well,’ he said, laughing. ‘I don’t quite digest my bile.’

‘But what bile?’ she said.

‘Bile!’ he said. ‘Don’t you know what that is?’ She was silent, and disappointed. He was taking no notice of her.

‘I’m going away for a while next month,’ she said.

‘You are! Where to?’

‘Venice! With Sir Clifford? For how long?’

‘For a month or so,’ she replied. ‘Clifford won’t go.’

‘He’ll stay here?’ he asked.

‘Yes! He hates to travel as he is.’

‘Ay, poor devil!’ he said, with sympathy. There was a pause.

‘You won’t forget me when I’m gone, will you?’ she asked. Again he lifted his eyes and looked full at her.

‘Forget?’ he said. ‘You know nobody forgets. It’s not a question of memory;’

She wanted to say: ‘When then?’ but she didn’t. Instead, she said in a mute kind of voice: ‘I told Clifford I might have a child.’

Now he really looked at her, intense and searching.

‘You did?’ he said at last. ‘And what did he say?’

‘Oh, he wouldn’t mind. He’d be glad, really, so long as it seemed to be his.’ She dared not look up at him.

He was silent a long time, then he gazed again on her face.

‘No mention of ME, of course?’ he said.

‘No. No mention of you,’ she said.

‘No, he’d hardly swallow me as a substitute breeder. Then where are you supposed to be getting the child?’

‘I might have a love–affair in Venice,’ she said.

‘You might,’ he replied slowly. ‘So that’s why you’re going?’

‘Not to have the love–affair,’ she said, looking up at him, pleading.

‘Just the appearance of one,’ he said.

There was silence. He sat staring out the window, with a faint grin, half mockery, half bitterness, on his face. She hated his grin.

‘You’ve not taken any precautions against having a child then?’ he asked her suddenly. ‘Because I haven’t.’

‘No,’ she said faintly. ‘I should hate that.’

He looked at her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of the window. There was a tense silence.

At last he turned his head and said satirically:

‘That was why you wanted me, then, to get a child?’

She hung her head.

‘No. Not really,’ she said. ‘What then, REALLY?’ he asked rather bitingly.

She looked up at him reproachfully, saying: ‘I don’t know.’

He broke into a laugh.

‘Then I’m damned if I do,’ he said.

There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence.