“That’s all right,” I said, and so it might have been, but for a series of minor irritations which managed to put me off the idea altogether. First of all, he insisted on showing and explaining to me his model for the set of his next play. It meant less than nothing to me, for I could not even understand the terminology he used. David at least knew better than to talk to me of cycloramas and revolves. Then he asked me if I liked music, and without waiting for an answer put on some Wagner, and Wagner is the one composer about whom I have any feelings at all: he makes my blood run cold. Then he asked me if I would like some supper, and what about some bacon and eggs? Fine, I said, and then discovered that I had to cook them. I suppose that it would have been unlikely that I should have stood round and watched him do it, but nevertheless, the thought of myself in an apron asking him if he liked his eggs hard or soft or fried on both sides did not accord easily with my ideas of passion. And you may say, after a remark like that, do you still call yourself a practical woman? and I will say no, not perhaps that, but a factual one still, a factual one. We ate our bacon and eggs, listening to that thundering fascist, and he did not even offer me a drink. I began to suspect that perhaps he was one of those men who never drink when alone and enjoy nothing more than putting their feet up, I thought that if I had been Sophy I would have helped myself, but that being myself, I preferred the silent indictment of waiting. When we had finished eating, I took the plates back into the kitchen. I was determined not to start washing up, but the masculine squalor of the sink and its surroundings compelled me. Nothing had been touched since the morning before: the sink hole was stopped with a mound of tea leaves, and there was a pile of dirty cups and saucers all over the draining-board. I looked anxiously for a glass or two, but there were none; my suspicions were right, he must be a secret abstainer.

I had finished the washing up and was in the middle of wiping the draining-board and the kitchen table when he came to see what I was doing.

“What on earth are you doing all that for?” he said, and I replied:

“You forget, I don’t like mess.”