“Will you take off your glasses, Polly?”

“If you like. But I won’t be able to see very far.”

“You don’t have to see very far, it’s only a little room,” he said. “Can you see me?”

“Of course I can. You’re right next to me. Do you like me better now?”

“You’re very pretty, I suppose, Polly.”

“Pretty Polly,” she said, without a smile.

Well, he said to himself, here you are, here she is without any glasses on.

“Nothing ever happens in Sewell Street.” She took his hand and let his finger with the bottle on it lie in her lap.

Here you are, he said, with your hand in her lap.

“Nothing ever happens where I come from, either. I think things must be happening everywhere except where one is. All kinds of things happen to other people. So they say,” he said.

“The man who was lodging next door but one cut his throat like this,” she said, “before breakfast.”

On his first free day since he was born Samuel sat with a loose girl in a locked bathroom over a teashop, the dirty curtains were drawn, and his hand lay on her thighs. He did not feel any emotion at all. O God, he thought, make me feel something, make me feel as I ought to, here is something happening and I’m cool and dull as a man in a bus. Make me remember all the stories. I caught her in my arms, my heart beat against hers, her body was trembling, her mouth opened like a flower. The lotus of Osiris was opening to the sun.

“Listen to the old birds,” she said, and he saw that the hot water was running over the rim of the washbasin.

I must be impotent, he thought.

“Why did he cut his throat like that, Polly? Was it love? I think if I was crossed in love I’d drink brandy and whisky and crême de menthe and that stuff that’s made with eggs.”

“It wasn’t love with Mr. Shaw. I don’t know why he did it. Mrs. Bentley said there was blood everywhere, everywhere, and all over the clock. He left a little note in the letter rack and all it said was that he’d been meaning to do it ever since October. Look, the water’ll drip right through into the kitchen.”

He turned it off. The birds stopped singing.

“Perhaps it was love, really. Perhaps he loved you, Polly, but he wouldn’t say so. From a distance.”

“Go on, he had a limp,” she said. “Old Dot and Carry. How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, nearly.”

“No you’re not.”

Then they were silent, sitting on the bath, his hand in her lap. She trailed her pale hand in the water. The birds began again.

“Pale hands I love,” he said.

“Beside the Shalimar. Do you, Sam? Do you love my hands? That’s a funny thing to say.” She looked dully at the long, floating weed in the water and made a wave. “It’s like the evening here.”