It was, he had said, awfully good of her to see him. She instantly protested. No, she had wanted to see him. He looked at her surprised. “You know, Helga,” he had begun with an air of desperation, “I can’t forgive myself for acting such a swine at the Tavenor’s party. I don’t at all blame you for being angry and not speaking to me except when you had to.”

But that, she exclaimed, was simply too ridiculous. “I wasn’t angry a bit.” And it had seemed to her that things were not exactly going forward as they should. It seemed that he had been very sincere, and very formal. Deliberately. She had looked down at her hands and inspected her bracelets, for she had felt that to look at him would be, under the circumstances, too exposing.

“I was afraid,” he went on, “that you might have misunderstood; might have been unhappy about it. I could kick myself. It was, it must have been, Tavenor’s rotten cocktails.”

Helga Crane’s sense of elation had abruptly left her. At the same time she had felt the need to answer carefully. No, she replied, she hadn’t thought of it at all. It had meant nothing to her. She had been kissed before. It was really too silly of him to have been at all bothered about it. “For what,” she had asked, “is one kiss more or less, these days, between friends?” She had even laughed a little.

Dr. Anderson was relieved. He had been, he told her, no end upset. Rising, he said: “I see you’re going out. I won’t keep you.”

Helga Crane too had risen. Quickly. A sort of madness had swept over her. She felt that he had belittled and ridiculed her. And thinking this, she had suddenly savagely slapped Robert Anderson with all her might, in the face.

For a short moment they had both stood stunned, in the deep silence which had followed that resounding slap. Then, without a word of contrition or apology, Helga Crane had gone out of the room and upstairs.

She had, she told herself, been perfectly justified in slapping Dr. Anderson, but she was not convinced. So she had tried hard to make herself very drunk in order that sleep might come to her, but had managed only to make herself very sick.