“And I look like him?” she asked, keeping tight hold of herself. She was seething with anger.

“As I see you,” persisted Lawrence bravely.

“I’m very sorry!” she sat biting her lower lip which would miserably tremble. Then a single heavy tear slid out of one eye and ran with surprising momentum down her cheek and on to her lap.

She kept perfectly still. As it was the far-away cheek from Lawrence, and as she was sitting with her back to the light, she hoped he would not notice. But almost immediately a second tear, scalding and vexatious pushed itself over the lower lid of the other eye.

She sprang up and made for the window.

“Why … are you … so … horrid?” she just managed to articulate. And then all in one gasping breath, … “Can’t you see I’m tired? I’ve been over-working. I need a holiday.”

If now she expected a penitent, prostrate Lawrence, she was mistaken. He sat stark still in his place and did not say a word.

She recovered all the more quickly for his immobility, and turned herself about again with a face suffused.

“I wonder …” She could almost smile though her voice was still full of treacherous quavers … “I wonder why I always behave like an idiot when I’m with you?”

“Listen …” she began presently as she helped herself to more tea. “ … I saw you in the theatre one night. And –” she added with tremulous mischief – “you were not by yourself.”

To her gratification Lawrence looked at her quite startled.

“When was that?”

“One Saturday night in summer.”

“Let me see now,” he considered warily. “Which theatre?”

“Daly’s.”

“Ah! Daly’s?” She could feel him hiding his relief. He remembered now. He had come up with a man … Martin his name was … a very entertaining fellow … not unlike Carl Nilsson in some ways … he would like Joanna to have met Martin. And what had she thought of the piece? Why had she not spoken to them he asked?

Joanna explained some of the circumstances. It had been, she said, in the vestibule crush, struggling for cabs on a night suddenly turned to rain as he might remember. And then something forced her to add – “I was with Louis Pender!”

But on this Lawrence made no comment.

Soon they spoke of other things. She put some vague questions about Oxford, and was struck by his detached and critical attitude. Here surely was another sign of change in him? In Glasgow he had been in some awe of the very name.

“I’ve learned one thing there, anyhow,” he told her. “I’ve learned to shudder at the thought of what I should have become with a tolerably successful academic career. I was shifted out of that, and a good job too!”

Though he did not actually add in words – “I owe it to you,” – Joanna felt herself both implicated and exonerated. She asked him what his new choice was to be.