“My dear,” he said. Even to him, it was inconceivable that her love should not be reciprocated. In compassion, he kneaded her fingers for a moment with his own. “What should I tell you? How happy I’ve been with you? How many things you’ve done for me? That, in a way, you’ve brought me back to life?” He let her hand go so that she could lie back on the pillows, and stretched himself exhaustedly along the foot of the bed with one arm beneath his head. Staring at the ceiling, he said: “I owe you everything.”

This admission seemed to her to set the seal on the dissolution of their love: total indebtedness could only be acknowledged where no attempt at repayment was contemplated. She closed her eyes on some sustained crest of pain. Tears of desolation moved haltingly from the corners of her eyelids and disappeared into the hair above her ears. She was scarcely aware of shedding these tears, drawn as they were from weakness and the accessible surface of grief; no such ready means of human expression could give the real nature of sadness.

“I think I should go home,” he said listlessly.

“Why?”

“We’re just exhausting ourselves, like this.… Let’s hope we can see things more clearly tomorrow.”

She gave a small regretful smile, her eyes still shut. “I think I must hope to see them less clearly.” She felt him sit up and lower his feet to the floor. She opened her eyes as he rose and came round the bed to stand beside her.

“If I leave,” he said, “you might get some sleep.”

“Stay a minute,” she said, still with that faint smile. She put her hand up to the now creased edge of his jacket. “I’m going to be so unhappy when you go, and I want to postpone it.”

He sat down again, on the edge of the bed. Ineptly, he smoothed back her hair, and then drew his finger along the wet mark between her eye and ear. With an air of helpless simplicity, he said to her: “I’m sorry.”

“My love,” she said, in the same hushed voice. “It hurts me so.”

“I know, I know.” His fingers passed irresolutely down her head and began to spread out the tangled hair on her shoulder. “I know,” he said again, half to himself. “It isn’t easy.”