“All I remember is the fearful strain,” she said. It had been like an undertow, the light going, and Edward sitting in the dark, smoking always, asking her about the children absent-mindedly, sometimes talking about his work, then suddenly getting up to go, not saying whatever it was he had come to say. “I’ll try, Damon,” she said, but in such a tired voice, that he reacted at once.

“Oh well, if you’re going to be a martyr about it.”

“No, no”—she got up, glad of the chance to go out into the kitchen, brought back grapefruit—“I’ll do it after supper. I really will. Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “What about Grace Kimlock? I should have thought——”

“Oh, the old darling, she’s awfully upset. I drove her home, as a matter of fact. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” Julia said. She didn’t like Grace Kimlock. There was something tangential about her, fierce old maid, taking out her repressions in politics. Julia did not like intellectual women, they disturbed her.

“Poor old girl,” Damon shook his head. “She’s in a perpetual head-on collision with the world as it is.”

“Bloody but unbowed?”

“She and Edward see eye to eye,” he said morosely, taking out a cigarette. “Well, I must get to work, lecture tomorrow. I haven’t even looked at it.”

After all, Julia thought, with relief, we have been spared. Damon was emerging from the worst of his mood of the last days. The least she could do was to call Edward.

His voice sounded excited and wary on the phone, but he agreed to come to dinner on the Friday, agreed right away, much to Julia’s surprise. After the call, she sat for a moment on the little chair under the stairs where the phone was, wondering if all Damon had been through in these last days was madness. When he was in one of his down moods, everything got out of proportion. Perhaps, after all, Edward was going to be sensible. Perhaps they could all be friends.

V

V