“Nor do I. We’ll go in, in a minute.” He put his cigarette out carefully in the damp earth.

“Lucas,” she began, “if it would help—I can tell you how it happened.”

“Please don’t,” he said, his voice rising again. “I couldn’t bear to know any details.”

She was silent, and then said, “How strange—it’s so what a woman would want to know. Isn’t that interesting?”

“No,” he said, but almost laughed. They were quiet for a while, and when he next turned his head he said, “Kate,” sharply, as if she might have disappeared in the meantime. “Let us go in.” He got up quickly and, feeling for her hand in the dark, helped her to her feet. He could not embrace her so soon without diminishing the significance of all he had said, and he let her go abruptly—thinking (mistakenly) that she would not have detected the passing of his anger. They stood for so long, however, facing each other, unseeing, that he was obliged either to speak or to take her in his arms, so he said into the darkness, “About the letters—I probably should write more.”

She touched his hand lightly. “Don’t.”

“No, really, I think you have a point.”

“Lucas,” she said, “I’ll cry again.” He put his arm about her shoulders and they crossed the lawn awkwardly, holding each other and out of step. “Be careful,” she said. “I left the watering can somewhere round here.”

“What a dark night,” he said, as they went up the path to the house. They stopped and stared at the sky. “Perhaps it’ll rain. I’m glad we didn’t go out to dinner.”

They walked on. They had almost reached the door of the house when she stood still again, within his arm, and said, “Lucas—what did you mean when you said that it was only something that you’d done yourself?”

COMFORT

“Lovely,” Morgan said, leaning down from the landing with his hand on the banister.

“What is?”

“You, on my stair.”

“Oh.” Lucia laughed. As she came to the last few steps, she halted and extended her hand, not in greeting but so that he might pull her to the top—which he did. “So many steps,” she gasped, pausing on the landing. “Morgan, why don’t you move?”

“I like them,” he said. “They keep away all but the intrepid.”

“I’m not intrepid.”

“So you hardly ever come,” he said, and smiled. They were standing outside his open door. “I would kiss you, but I could never get under the brim of that hat.”

“I’ll take it off in a minute,” she said. “I mean—I’ll take it off anyway.”

He touched her elbow. “Come in. Mrs. Fanshaw’s here—it’s her day. If you’d only rung up yesterday I could have put her off.”