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week.’ She was preposterously young to have such complete theoretical knowledge of vice. She said, ‘Clara’s got a telephone which fits into a doll. All dressed up as a Spanish dancer. And she always gives her maid the chocolates, Clara says.’
    â€˜Clara,’ he said, ‘can afford to wait.’ He seemed to be getting a very complete picture of that young woman; she probably had a kind heart, but so, he believed, had Benditch’s daughter. She had given him a bun on a platform: it had seemed at the time a rather striking gesture of heedless generosity.
    A voice outside said, ‘What are you doing here, Else?’ It was the manageress.
    â€˜I called her in,’ D. said, ‘to ask who had been in here.’
    He hadn’t yet had time to absorb the information the child had given him – was the manageress another of his, as it were, collaborators, like K., anxious to see that he followed the narrow and virtuous path, or had she been bribed by L.? Why, in that case, should he have been sent to this hotel by the people at home? His room had been booked; everything had been arranged for him, so that they should never lose contact. But that, of course, might all have been arranged by whoever it was gave information to L. – if anybody had. There was no end to the circles in this hell.
    â€˜Nobody,’ the manageress said, ‘has been in here but myself – and Else.’
    â€˜I told Else to let nobody in.’
    â€˜You ought to have spoken to me.’ She had a square strong face ruined by ill-health. ‘Besides, there’s nobody would go into your room – except those with business there.’
    â€˜Somebody seemed to take an interest in these papers of mine.’
    â€˜Did you touch them, Else?’
    â€˜Of course I didn’t.’
    She turned her big square spotty face to him like a challenge: an old keep still capable of holding out. ‘You see, you must be wrong – if you believe the girl.’
    â€˜I believe her .’
    â€˜Then there’s no more to be said and no harm done.’ He said nothing: it wasn’t worth saying anything – she was either one of his own or one of L.’s party. It didn’t matter which, for she had found nothing of interest, and he couldn’t move from the hotel: he had his orders. ‘And now perhaps you’ll let me say what I came up here to say – there’s a lady wants to speak to you on the telephone. In the hall.’
    He said with surprise, ‘A lady?’
    â€˜It’s what I said.’
    â€˜Did she give her name?’
    â€˜She did not.’ He saw Else watching him with anxiety; he thought – good God, surely not another complication, calf-love? He touched her sleeve as he went out of the door and said, ‘Trust me.’ Fourteen was a dreadfully early age at which to know so much and be so powerless. If this was civilisation – the crowded prosperous streets, the women trooping in for coffee at Buzzard’s, the lady-in-waiting at King Edward’s court, and the sinking, drowning child – he preferred barbarity, the bombed streets and the food queues: a child there had nothing worse to look forward to than death. Well, it was for her kind that he was fighting: to prevent the return of such a civilisation to his own country.
    He took off the receiver. ‘Hullo. Who’s that, please?’
    An impatient voice said, ‘This is Rose Cullen.’ What on earth, he thought, does that mean? Are they going to try to get at me, as in the story-books, with a girl? ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Did you get home safely the other night – to Gwyn Cottage?’ There was only one person who could have given her his address, and that was L.
    â€˜Of course I got home. Listen.’
    â€˜I’m sorry I had to leave you in such questionable company.’
    â€˜Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t be a fool. Are you a