“Though I loathe things as they are,” he confessed, “I don’t really know what I want – what kind of a life.”

Already that afternoon he had spat contempt at his work and harped on his middle-agedness with a peculiar disgust that sent despair like a shudder through Joanna’s very flesh. Now, as his deep-set bitterness welled up in him, he struck out at her and at himself with equal savagery.

“I suppose I’m a coward,” he girded. “Well, what’s to be done about it? If it’s a hero you want, you better have nothing to do with me. It isn’t too late. I’ve really done you no harm, have I? My advice to you is – leave the old ship in time. Take a lesson from the rats, my dear. The worst of it is you are not of the rat tribe. You’d stick to me, I do believe. Why are you so good? I don’t think I want you to be so good. It only makes things worse for me.”

By experience Joanna knew that whatever she might say would be wrong in reply to this outburst; so she kept silent. It was in these tormented hours that she loved Louis most poignantly. But she was like a mother quite alone with a sick, deliriously fractious child when there is no doctor within miles. She would have done or given anything to restore him, would have forgone her sex if that had been possible (and sometimes she had the strange feeling that he desired this of her); but she could not tell his malady, and so was helpless.

When they had parted thus, she would wander in a limbo of blind and suffering endurance till their next meeting. Where was it, she questioned herself, that she failed him? And again, how could she do aught but fail him so long as he would not take her wholly, wholly give himself? Engirdled by the flames at La France Quadrant they had rushed together to assuage their immediate, mutual need, and she had fancied herself at last possessed. But with the dawn of the next day she had known that Louis no more than Bob, no more than Mario, had made her his. Nor had he committed himself to her. (This, though their love had emerged only the sweeter and the freer from that first embrace.) Was it something that only women desire? Did men fear and avoid the consummation of spirit it was bound to bring? Or was it, whispered the sceptic in her, a lovely delusion? There were, one must believe, certain false dreams – will o’ the wisps – which could lead the spirit disastrously astray. Was this such a dream?