At a quarter past one I thought it was time that I should be getting home. I was afraid that Joe might have woken or that the house might have burned down. And I was tired: Joe still woke me at six every morning. So I put my cigarettes and matches and litter back into my handbag, tied on my head-square, put on my damp raincoat and set off down the corridor towards the pass door that connected backstage with the auditorium. The front of the house was locked, and I would have to go out through the stage door. I had just put my hand on the pass doorknob when the corridor light went out. I pushed the door open, and saw nothing on the other side but blackness, and heard the cries of delight and annoyance and amazement that indicated a total fuse. I stood quite still where I was, waiting for someone to switch something on, but the darkness continued as the noise increased. People started to yell for electricians, for Wyndham Farrar, for matches. I stood and listened and smelled the dust and varnish and sawdust and size and all the fake smells of the theatre. I dared not move for fear of getting in the way. People were groping about in all directions, some of them clearly profiting from the dramatic blackout to achieve in five minutes what they might not otherwise have got round to for days. It was that time of night when anxiety and exhaustion lead to all kinds of compensatory contact. In the distant gleam of a match I saw David with one arm round Sophy and the other round a girl called Mavis, and then the light flickered and went out. Quite near me someone started to go into a long explanation, which he shouted at the top of his voice to someone else in the auditorium, about what was wrong with the emergency supply. I thought I would retreat, and I stepped back through the door into the corridor, which was so dark that I could not see my own hand when I held it up before me. It was not like the darkness in one’s own house: the thick carpet was unfamiliar, I could not locate the walls, I was unwilling to lose myself in the maze of corridors, foyers and staircases that extended backwards behind me. So I waited, with everyone else, for magic light to be restored, but before anything else happened I heard footsteps coming toward me along the corridor, gropingly. Quickly I searched for my matches and started to light myself a cigarette, for the thought of someone banging into me namelessly filled me with alarm. At the sight of the flame the footsteps quickened, and with embarrassed courtesy I extended the match into the darkness, and as it burned low to my finger ends Wyndham himself closed up on me. I had just time to see his face before I had to blow out the light. He was duskily gilded and heavily furrowed with more years than I was accustomed to: forty-three of them, to be exact, and why not be exact? The dimness and the suddenly extinguished brightness and the ensuing undefined closeness reminded me of something, and my guts sagged or stiffened or dropped, I am not sure what they do, but they do it from intense fear or apprehension or memory. We stood there in silence together, and I wondered if perhaps it had been too dark for him to see my face. But he said after a short pause: