Without turning to her, he suddenly burst out, “Ah, Kate, how could you?”

Twisting her fingers together around her knees, she said in a small, gruff voice, “You leave me alone too much.”

“It’s not my idea, for God’s sake. What can I do, if they send me on these trips? It’s the way I earn my living, after all.” (“And yours” fitted neatly into a small pause.) “I don’t choose it.”

“You might be less enthusiastic about it. I mean, you could—object more.”

“There wasn’t anyone else who could do this last trip.”

“You were away for two months,” she said.

“Well, one doesn’t go to Africa for the day, you know.” He stopped, surprised to find himself in a defensive position.

She said, seeing this, “I’m not justifying myself.”

“Hardly,” he replied, ungenerously.

“Lucas,” she said, not daring to touch him, but laying her hand on the grass between them, “you are right to mind. I would hate it if you didn’t, and I’m terribly, terribly sorry. But it was just silly, that’s all. It didn’t matter. Please don’t think it mattered.”

“That seems, somehow, to make it worse.” He drew on his cigarette. “Yes, I do mind. Of course I mind. I mind like hell.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“What did you expect?”

“In the first place, I didn’t think you’d—know,” she said, barely hesitating to make the correction. “And then, I suppose I thought you would be more—philosophical about it.”

“I can only say that you have a curious idea either of philosophy or of me.”

She laid the side of her head against her knees. “Lucas—don’t be so cold with me,” she said. “Please don’t be.” The darkness was coming down quickly and she could hardly see him now: he was a black, self-contained shape, a ship exuding smoke and showing a single light. “We talk like a couple of stage Englishmen. I would really rather that you hit me.”

“Don’t be melodramatic—you know you’d have a fit if I hit you.” He did agree, nevertheless, that his idea of acceptable behavior had left him no way of dealing with such a discovery.

A mosquito was biting her ankle; she felt that at this juncture she had no choice but to disregard it.

He went on. “It must make a difference.”

“Everything makes a difference.”

Annoyed by the solecism, he said, “Do you think I can ever be away from you again without thinking of this?”

She said, without spirit, “The other possibility would be not to go.”

“You’re unreasonable,” he replied in a hard voice.

“In any case, it’s not as though it had ever happened before. Or would again.”

“I have no way of knowing that.”

“Except that I tell you.”

“Then why has it happened now? Kate, can you tell me why?”