Her mind leapt forward immediately to telling Veronica that Ronald (‘Yes, my dear, I swear he did actually –!’) had asked her to come for a walk. ‘One to me,’ she reckoned; ‘there’s nothing like being crisp with these slithery, day-after-to-morrow people who only half see you. He’d eat out of my hand, I’ll swear he would. I shall keep him out for an hour, take him round by the town.’ Smiling, she said to the others: ‘Do you mind if Ronald and I move along?’ Her only doubt, as coming out of the gate she turned the head of Ronald resolutely townwards, was whether she could postpone for so long the ecstasy of telling Veronica, who should be now, she knew, curled up in her bed by the window, reading a magazine and eating peppermints, and regreting more and more, as the interval of solitude prolonged itself, that the affair Victor should ever have occurred.

The other two were left in a solitude which, quite unprecedented, they felt to be exigent and a little singular. ‘I expect,’ Joan said with a little stiff movement that did not do much for her, ‘that we had better be getting along, too.’

‘I expect we had,’ said Colonel Duperrier. It was half-past five, he discovered; up there she would be half insane with speculation; by this hour he had till now never failed to present himself. He looked about him at the other tables distant between the trees where couples in rather forced and conscious intimacy still lingered, the evening before them, gazing a shade owlishly less at than around each other, weighed down by their leisure. Odd, thought Colonel Duperrier; queer, following his look, thought Joan. She propped her chin on her chilly hand and sighed a melancholy, unresentful sigh. ‘Cheer up!’ her friend said solemnly.

‘I haven’t got such a cheerful disposition as you have,’ she stated.

‘I suppose I have got rather a cheerful disposition,’ said Colonel Duperrier, glancing reluctantly at himself and looking away again.

‘Of course,’ she said in her matter-of-fact little voice, ‘you are wonderful.’ She leant back to grope behind her chair for her racquet and repeated ‘Wonderful!’ in a tone of indignation, perhaps because the racquet wasn’t there. ‘I expect,’ she began again, ‘we ought to be——’

‘I know. I really think we ought to be coming in. If you catch cold, you know, I should never forgive myself.’

‘I promise I won’t catch cold,’ poor Joan said faithfully, and getting up looked round distractedly, huntedly, for the racquet propped against the side of her chair.

‘Thank you very much,’ she said, ‘for our nice tea.’

‘It has been a pleasure to me,’ said Colonel Duperrier.

20

Mrs Kerr

‘DEAR MR MILTON,’ EXCLAIMED Mrs Kerr, ‘is this true? Because if so, it’s wonderful!’