The house, although built inside a wood, was on a gradual slope, so that their view was framed but not obscured by trees. Below the wood, cultivated land—scarcely any of which was theirs—stretched across a little valley and up the opposite hill. The few lights already glowing in the warm evening came from farms or from other summer houses, or belonged to cars that passed along the road at the end of the valley. Their own house, at their backs, was unlit, sharply white in the fading sunshine—a small Greek-revival house just large enough for two people. For years Lucas had talked of adding a wing so that their occasional summer guests might be more comfortable, but in fact the house could only be extended at the sacrifice of its proportions. The wing had stayed unbuilt and the guests continued to sleep in the living room, able to return to town as soon as possible. Kate and Lucas had no children.

“Yes, it is lovely this evening,” she agreed, enlarging his more moderate remark. She waited for him to speak again, but he only threw the end of his cigarette into the grass. “Should you do that?” she asked. “Is it safe?”

“You just said the grass was damp,” he pointed out.

She thought, dejectedly, that a sudden conflagration would at least divert him from what he was about to say, but the moments passed with no delivering outbreak of flames, the cigarette having disobligingly fizzled out in a patch of clover. She wished she had brought a sweater for her bare shoulders, but did not like to go inside for one now. She changed her attitude and sat, like him, hugging her knees. “Let’s hope they won’t drive over to see how you are, and find us sitting out here.”

Again he did not reply, and she was left to feel that her remarks were received as crude attempts at appeasement—which they were. She looked at him, and he lighted another cigarette, throwing the match away with a certain insistence. Then he said, “I just can’t get used to it.”

She said, cautiously, “I’m not quite sure what you feel.”

“Well, I feel—all the classic symptoms, I suppose.” He made a brief ironical movement with his shoulders. “Like the deceived husband in a play. I keep telling myself that after all it doesn’t matter, you didn’t mean it, it’s only what I’ve done myself, but I still can’t get used to it.”

She curled her toes in apprehension. “From what you said this morning, I take it you don’t intend to do anything about it?”

“Do anything? What should I do?”

“I mean,” she said, knowing he had understood her, “that you don’t intend to leave me.”

“It doesn’t seem on that scale, does it? From what you tell me. What was it you said it was—an aberration?”

“An incident.”