“And if you can’t know—for knowing really means being Edward—what then?”

“I’ll die,” Grace said simply.

This, Orlando thought, is what it is to be young, this absolute quality, and for the moment he found it peculiarly irritating.

“Don’t be childish, Grace. How well did you know Edward?”

“You sound like an inquisitor,” she said nervously. She had never seen this stern Orlando before. “You know very well that Edward was like a son to me.”

“Do mothers really know their sons?” he asked inexorably. “Don’t you understand, Grace, that what you were to Edward was one fixed point, was a sort of security—yes, like the security of a parent, perhaps. You agreed about all the important things.”

“Well, didn’t that make us close?”

“In one way, yes. But who were Edward’s lovers, if he had a lover?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. And neither do I. Don’t you see? There are whole areas of Edward’s life that we never touched, never could touch.”

“People like Edward Cavan don’t commit suicide for love—a man of fifty—really, Orlando, what a romantic you are!” She triumphed.

“No, perhaps not. But in a conflict so terrible that it ends in suicide, the whole person is engaged. You’ll have to admit that.”

“Decent people don’t commit suicide.” Grace took refuge again in her anger.

“Perhaps not, if you regard suicide as a crime. Do you?” Orlando was relentless.

“I don’t know”—and she flung up her hands in a gesture of unwilling abandon. “You’re no help to me, Orlando—and I thought you would be.” There was no gentleness in her voice.

“I’m a wounded man,” he said stroking his beard rhythmically. When he did this it was always a sign of great agitation, as if he calmed himself as one might calm a cat. “Don’t badger me.”

She shook her head as if to shake something off. “It’s like a nightmare. Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“No.” Orlando walked over to the long French windows and looked out. “Nothing will ever be the same again.”

“Animals are the only comfort,” came the relentless anguished voice behind him. As he turned, Orlando saw the room, which had been flying to pieces, slowly focus on the bowed old figure, her hands clasped under her chin, and knew how dear she had become to him in the last few minutes of war.

“How is Horace?” he inquired and it meant, It’s all right. Somehow we’ll survive this together.