She walked off, dragging her feet through the withered winter grass and enjoying the fresh cold smell of the evening.

But when she got to the pond she found that someone else was there before her. She heard a confused noise of barking, splashing and whining and a human voice before she came round the curve of the trees, and did not like what she heard; the noises were ugly, and the voice too loud, and the evening was so frozen, exquisite and still that she resented any loud sounds. She began to feel annoyed before she saw what was happening, and when she faced the still expanse of water backed by the hazy brown and deep purple of water plants, she blazed into rage.

She did not hesitate, but marched straight up to the young man who was setting a bull terrier on to the terrified moorhens and demanded loudly, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

The young man, who was leaning over the railing, urging the dog into the water, spun round at once; Sophia saw a dark, foreign, dapper face and two big, dark eyes, which just for a flash, were afraid. But when he saw that the bold questioner was only an angry young woman in a shabby coat and no hat, he looked amused and angry instead, and said, in a light voice coloured by some unfamiliar accent ‘Who the hell are you to ask?’

‘Never mind who I am; how dare you set your beastly dog on the moorhens? Call him off, can’t you? Oh, look, he’s got one! Call him off, you can be fined five pounds for this, if a keeper catches you! Here, here, boy,’ she made a very funny attempt to whistle through her rage, extending her fingers and snapping them. ‘Here, here, good dog … if you don’t call him off, I’ll—’ and she looked wildly for something with which to hit the young man, who was laughing.

She could see nothing that would do for a weapon, and so she went straight at him with her fists clenched, eyes wide open and staring with rage and her short fair hair blowing back.

He backed before her, saying something in a foreign language, and then, ‘All right, here, hi, keep off! I’m sorry – I’ll call him off! Here, Brandy, good boy! come here, sir. Brandy!’

Brandy stopped splashing among the reeds and reluctantly came back, swimming through the icy water, which streamed away on either side of his pink, split mouth. A moorhen was still twitching among the broken reeds, with two little claws, the colour of yellow-green water plants, sticking straight out in front of it.

‘There!’ said the young man. ‘Bad dog! How dar-r-re you, sir. Bad dog!’ (and then something in the unknown language again). ‘You bad dog!’

‘You needn’t blame the dog. He wouldn’t have gone for them unless you’d let him,’ said Sophia, turning to go.

Her feelings had been so near the surface for the last few months that the slightest display of emotion brought maddening tears, and she now turned her back in order to hide them, wishing that her heart would stop racing, her legs shaking and her stomach churning.