‘Yes,’ said Charles, not seeing his drift.

‘I suppose the job wouldn’t—wouldn’t suit you at all, would it?’

He was grateful, rather touched, even, but shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Braceweight, but as a matter of fact I’m thinking of getting married myself one of these days.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Braceweight faintly. ‘Oh, well. That’s that, of course.’

‘You’ll soon get another chauffeur,’ said Charles reassuringly, gathering up his broom.

He saw a lot of Rosa in the next week. They went out on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. Each time he called for her at the house, and chatted for a time with anyone who happened to be at home. Even Glad began to get used to him, and learnt to take her eyes off his face now and again. It was pleasant, but he was not altogether sorry to get an evening to himself on the Friday, when Rosa was busy doing something or other. Such repeated doses of affection and domesticity, with nothing to balance it, could become a little oppressive. He needed it, like bread, but one can be surfeited with bread.

He tried this metaphor over in his mind as he sat in his digs after tea, trying to analyse his feelings. Yes, surfeit; and yet perhaps it was something more acute than just a mild bout of emotional over-eating. Somewhere, he could not quite localize it, there was a hunger as well. A sensation not properly defined, not possible properly to define, was faintly present under the surface of his contentment. Like the itching of a wound as it finally healed. But where was he wounded? His smashed life, like his smashed body, had become whole again. Itch, itch. Something was the matter.

‘A couple of drinks, that’s what you need, my man,’ he said to himself in the hall mirror as he went out. It was heavy and thundery outside; early August and beginning to get that washed-out feeling of high summer, when the freshness has gone from the leaves. Not that there were any leaves in the streets where he was walking, but outside, in the country, the leaves were drying slowly, and they had whispered their message to be heard in the backyards within the smoke-ring of the city.