For the twentieth time she responded: “Oh yes.” She subdued the folds of the map with her fingers. She bent her head over the fantastic pattern of blue sea and green islands with an assiduous show of interest, like a child examining an invitation for a party to which she has not been asked.

“I may go to France later,” Russell remarked unsparingly. The studied absorption of her attitude and his awareness of her unshed tears could not touch him. He felt again that she was obtruding her trivial, untimely demands onto a scene of disaster, and he felt justified in setting her down. Being away from all this, and from her, was now the only prospect that gave him pleasure; tomorrow could not come quickly enough. And yet—the idea of anyone else receiving this tender, faultless love of hers, or being subjected to its relentless self-denial, was unthinkable. Even if he never came back to her—though he supposed he would—he must be able to think that she wanted him, always. “Was James around this morning?” he asked, discarding one pamphlet after another.

“He was having breakfast,” she said.

“Is he going to hang about here all summer? Really, Constance indulges him. I always had to work at least part of the vacation.”

“She does spoil him, of course. It’s the gap in your ages, don’t you think?” Russell was fourteen years older than James. “Still, James is turning out rather well.” Miranda cast about uneasily for a means of turning the conversation. She felt it would be the last straw if James’s interest in her, ridiculous as it was, were to come to Russell’s attention now.

Russell could only hope that James would get over it soon. It was better, he had decided, not to mention anything to Miranda. But she really was impossible—any other woman would have noticed such a thing immediately. She lives in a world of her own, he thought, as he looked at her innocently sorting the papers on the bed. “I suppose it’s time I got up,” he said.

“Where’s Miranda?” James asked, when Russell appeared alone in the bright garden.