He looked pale, and his brows were sombre.

‘And were you sorry when I came along?’ she asked.

‘I was sorry and I was glad.’

‘And what are you now?’

‘I’m sorry, from the outside: all the complications and the ugliness and recrimination that’s bound to come, sooner or later. That’s when my blood sinks, and I’m low. But when my blood comes up, I’m glad. I’m even triumphant. I was really getting bitter. I thought there was no real sex left: never a woman who’d really ‘‘come’’ naturally with a man: except black women, and somehow, well, we’re white men: and they’re a bit like mud.’

‘And now, are you glad of me?’ she asked.

‘Yes! When I can forget the rest. When I can’t forget the rest, I want to get under the table and die.’

‘Why under the table?’

‘Why?’ he laughed. ‘Hide, I suppose. Baby!’

‘You do seem to have had awful experiences of women,’ she said.

‘You see, I couldn’t fool myself. That’s where most men manage. They take an attitude, and accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I wanted with a woman, and I could never say I’d got it when I hadn’t.’

‘But have you got it now?’

‘Looks as if I might have.’

‘Then why are you so pale and gloomy?’

‘Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself.’

She sat in silence. It was growing late.

‘And do you think it’s important, a man and a woman?’ she asked him.

‘For me it is. For me it’s the core of my life: if I have a right relation with a woman.’

‘And if you didn’t get it?’

‘Then I’d have to do without.’

Again she pondered, before she asked:

‘And do you think you’ve always been right with women?’

‘God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I spoilt her. And I’m very mistrustful. You’ll have to expect it. It takes a lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I’m a fraud too. I mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken.’

She looked at him.

‘You don’t mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up,’ she said. ‘You don’t mistrust then, do you?’

‘No, alas! That’s how I’ve got into all the trouble. And that’s why my mind mistrusts so thoroughly.’

‘Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!’

The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash–clogged fire sank.

‘We ARE a couple of battered warriors,’ said Connie.

‘Are you battered too?’ he laughed. ‘And here we are returning to the fray!’

‘Yes! I feel really frightened.’

‘Ay!’

He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them near the fire. In the morning he would grease them. He poked the ash of pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. ‘Even burnt, it’s filthy,’ he said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning. Then he went out awhile with the dog.