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she was out of the car, running. He heard the key scrape in the lock of the cottage door. Then the door opened and shut and he was alone, in silence, with Edna Whittington.
    He said at once: ‘I don’t know what you have to say, Edna, but it’s very late and I’d like to get home.’
    â€˜How long has this been going on?’ she said.
    â€˜About twenty years.’
    â€˜If you’re going to be flippant I shall probably lose my temper and——’
    â€˜I’m not going into explanations,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want, and the sooner you get it into your head the better.’
    She gave the distasteful beginning of a laugh.
    â€˜All right. I’ll just ask you one question. If that isn’t too much?’
    â€˜Ask.’
    â€˜I suppose you’re going to tell me you love this child?’
    â€˜Very much.’
    â€˜Setting aside the word infatuation,’ she said, ‘do you suppose she loves you?’
    â€˜I do, and she does,’ he said.
    This time she did laugh. It was husky, unpleasant and briefly sinister.
    â€˜I honestly think you’re serious about this.’
    â€˜I’m not only serious,’ he said. ‘It’s my whole life. And hers.’
    She started to light a cigarette. He disliked very much the idea of smoking in cars and he was annoyed as he saw the thin masked face, so drawn that it was almost skeletonized, in the light of the match and then in the burning glow of the cigarette held between the drooping magenta lips.
    â€˜You know, Henry,’ she said, She blew smoke withwhat appeared to be unconstricted ease. ‘Somebody will have to be told.’
    He instantly thought of Katey: Katey the shabby lioness, passing through her blonde phases, her gin-mists; Katey yelling at him, calling him a squeak-mouse; messy, lost, groping, scrofulous Katey.
    â€˜Oh! Katey will be told,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Katey. Tomorrow.’
    Edna Whittington blew smoke in a thin excruciated line.
    â€˜I wasn’t thinking of Katey.’
    He couldn’t think who else could possibly be told and for a moment he didn’t care.
    â€˜I daresay my friends have put two and two together,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’
    â€˜I wasn’t thinking of your friends.’
    â€˜Who then?’
    She drew smoke and released it. The smoke had a strange repugnant scent about it. He saw her eyes narrowed in the narrow face, the mouth drawn down, almost cadaverous, and he grasped that this was a smile.
    â€˜Valerie,’ she said. ‘Valerie will have to be told.’
    â€˜Told?’ he said. The car was half full of smoke, tainted with the scent of it. He felt his annoyance with her rising to temper. ‘Told what, for God’s sake?’
    â€˜About us,’ she said. ‘You and me.’
    â€˜Us? And what about us?’
    He suddenly felt uneasy and on edge, nerves probing, the smoke sickening him.
    â€˜I think she has to be told,’ she said, ‘that you and Iwere lovers. Of course it was some time ago. But wouldn’t you think that that was only fair?’
    He could not speak. He simply made one of his habitual groping gestures with his hands, up towards his face, as if his spectacles had suddenly become completely opaque with the white sickening smoke of her cigarette and he could not see.
    â€˜Not once,’ she said, ‘but many times. Oh! yes, I think she has to be told. I think so.’
    She did not know quite what happened after that. He seemed suddenly to lose control of himself and started yelling. She had never known a Harry Barnfield who could yell, show anger, make foul noises or use violence and now he struck her in the face. The blow partially blinded her, knocking the cigarette from her lips, and in the confusion she heard him yelling blackly as he turned the key of the car.
    When she recovered herself the car was travelling