She pushed the bedclothes back once more, and lowered her feet to the cold, glossy floor. And Ben, she thought, shivering and resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand. She found it hard to believe in Ben as Julie’s husband, Simon’s father, a member (as she supposed he must be) of the community, traveling up to London every morning of the week, and at home seeming settled and domestic, reading the evening paper with the air of one who must not be disturbed. She supposed that in his way he must love Julie, but she couldn’t really imagine him intimate with anyone. She thought of him as a source of knowledge rather than experience; a good, though not contemporary mind, a person rather than a man.

“I adore you,” Ben said, without opening his eyes, “but why are you up so early?”

Julie, at the mirror, uttered a strangled sound. She took a bobby pin from between her teeth and fastened up the last, escaping lock of hair. “I have to take care of Simon until the girl arrives. And think about lunch.… And then, there’s Lilian.”

“What about her?” Ben stretched out into the depression left by Julie’s body in the other half of the bed. His eyes, now open, were surprisingly alert. “Come and talk to me.”

She came and sat beside him, reaching her arm across his body to rest her hand on the bed. “I just mean I have to think of her—make sure she’s not cold or anything.”

“Difficult to see how she can be anything else, when we’ve got both the radiators.”

“Oh, Lord! I forgot.… Don’t, darling, after all the trouble I took combing it.”

“Why is it done differently?” He loosened another strand.

“I don’t know—I suppose because Lilian eyes me as though I should Do Something with myself. She makes me feel that I look … married.”

“Scarcely astonishing, in the circumstances.” He drew her elbow back so that, losing the support of her arm, she collapsed against his breast. She remained there, and he put his arm around her. “‘Old, married, and in despair’—is that the idea?”

“Something like that.”

“Too soon for that,” he observed, encouragingly. “But I know what you mean. Since she’s been here I can hardly read the paper without feeling that I’ve sold my immortal soul.”

Julie giggled. “Don’t be awful.” She drew away from him and put her hands up to her hair, assessing the damage. “Do you think she’s happy? I get the feeling she doesn’t want anything—you know, doesn’t know what she should do with her life.…” She opened another bobby pin with her teeth and replaced it at the back of her head. “We, at least, know where we are.”

“‘I am between water and stone fruit in India,’” declared Ben, looking up at Lilian over the Times. “In eleven letters.”

“Any clues?”

“None.”

“Pondicherry,” Lilian said, after a moment’s silence.