Innocent and tranquil as his dealings with her had been, he had, after all, known a greater degree of happiness, and therefore of intimacy, with her than with any other woman, and so they were able to converse, instantaneously, without the use of words. Helplessly, silently, he tried to explain that it had all been a mistake. Silently, in answer, she condemned him.

‘You sinned against me,’ her expression and stance told him. ‘You injured me in the one way that can never be forgiven. Because, ultimately, you were committing the one great offence against a fellow-creature: you tried to use me. Not to give, not to combine, but to use me.’ ‘It wasn’t so simple,’ he tried, with his eyes, to plead, but she cut across his defence. ‘I was ready to love you, and all you were doing was taking me as a drug.’ Accusation and apology, inadmissable, lame apology, flashed across the table. He felt stricken and soiled.

‘What was it?’ she repeated, aloud.

Crushed and ashamed, he muttered, ‘I can’t explain—only—it was just—’

‘Tell me what happened. Something must have happened, some­thing you could tell me about,’ she said in a new voice, flat and without overtone.

‘I saw a handbag. It was a handbag,’ he burst out, painfully, madly.

‘Heavens! Haven’t you got these dishes done yet?’ exclaimed the staff nurse, bustling in. ‘It beats me what you people do with your time.’ Then she saw that Rosa was crying. She was crying heavily, helplessly, without any attempt at concealment. The staff nurse rounded on Charles, violently partisan, a woman standing up for another woman against the common enemy.

‘What have you been doing to her?’ she demanded bitterly.

‘Oh, please, please,’ said Charles, utterly defeated and miserable. ‘It isn’t anything you could understand. Please don’t let’s go into it.’

Rosa had turned away. Her shoulders were moving rhythmic­ally as she sobbed without making a sound. The staff nurse was passionately angry and insulted that Charles should have said this was something she could not understand.

‘Can’t understand, my foot,’ she said. ‘That’s the line all you dirty cads take. I can understand all right. You’ve been messing about with her, you’ve been making her unhappy. I know you, damn the lot of you. Don’t take on, kiddie,’ she said to Rosa. ‘You’ll be better off without a rotten bastard like him. You’re a rotten bastard,’ she added to Charles.

‘Yes,’ he said, and nodded.

‘Well, get out of here,’ she stormed. ‘Get out of here and do some work for your living.’

Dumbly, head bowed, he collected his broom and duster.

‘And there’s another thing, Mister Don Juan,’ she said, her arm round Rosa’s shoulders. ‘Just let me catch you putting your foot wrong and I’ll see you sacked quicker than that.’ She snapped the fingers of her free hand.