‘To have one more shot at enlisting. If they won’t like me any better here than they did in Australia I shall return with Gaunt. There must be something for a blind bat to do. They say they use everybody at home. I shall wear battle dress, and sit in a black little cellar at the end of the longest passage of an obscure building typewriting memoranda for a Minor Blimp. Will you write to me?’

Barbara didn’t answer. ‘Will you?’ he insisted and she nodded.

‘Fancy!’ Dikon said after a moment. ‘There are tears in your eyes because he’s going and here am I, ready to howl like a banshee at the notion of leaving you. There’s no sense in it.’

Barbara stopped short and glared at him. ‘It’s not for that,’ she said. ‘You’re not as sharp as I thought you were. It’s because, well, it’s partly because I’ve been living in a hollow mockery.’ She brought this out in her old style, turning her eyes up and the corner of her mouth down.

‘Don’t do that to your nice face,’ said Dikon.

‘I’ll do what I like with my face,’ said Barbara with spirit. ‘If my face irritates you, you needn’t look at it. You talk about being fond of me but all you want to do is fiddle about with me until you’ve made me into a bad imitation of some beastly glamour girl.’

‘No, honestly. Honestly not. I wouldn’t mind if you screamed at me because I sniff when I read and bite my nails. You can make one face after another with the virtuosity of a Saint Vitus and I shall still love you. Why have you been living in your “hollow mockery”?’

‘I’ve been such a frightful fool. Slopping all over him because I thought he was like Mr Rochester and all the time he’s just vain and selfish and rather common. Pretending his soul was lacerated by what happened and all the time he was just afraid he’d be mixed up in it. I’m so ashamed of myself.’

‘Oh,’ said Dikon.

‘And for him to give me those things. And look at me as if I was a cheap plaything—I didn’t make a face. You can’t say I made a face.’

‘You never batted an eyelash. But you’re too hard on him. He’s kind-hearted, and he gives presents like you’d shell peas. Model dresses are no more than a couple of rosebuds to him.’

‘And when Daddy told him, very nicely, that I couldn’t possibly accept them he behaved frightfully. He said: “She can etc. well turn an etc. nudist if it amuses her.” Sim heard him.’