Many people were embarrassed by Milton, avoided meeting him in the corridors, moved away when he came into the lounge, and when they caught his eye did not know where to look and hurried away to complain of him. He had expected and hoped that nothing would ‘come out’ until he and Sydney had managed to slip away quietly, but in this he had counted without her directness – he had written a note on the matter to send to her room, but on reading it through had destroyed it (it seemed to reek with the meanest solicitudes) and had sat with his head in his hands, unable to write her another. Sydney had ‘told’ Tessa; Tessa, through confidantes fatally chosen and an air for the world of reserved desolation, let everyone know. He was offered during the tête-à-têtes which circumstances or the conscientiousness of a few friends forced on him all kinds of silences, and found them poor enough meat in his hunger, his sudden ache for companionship; silences applied tenderly, like a swab to a wound; silences held up, like a shield, square and blank; silences poked across at him gingerly; the silences of Miss Pym, of Colonel Duperrier, of Eileen Lawrence. Sensitive to so abashing his world, he began to feel like a leper. His perturbation as to whether he ought to be here, the increasingly sharp little stings with which consciousness, less of suffering than of being a too evidently suffering man, was brought home again and again to him kept up such a din in his mind that thought was impossible. He could not think of Sydney or of what they had lost or gained. Now and then he would brace himself and with cold exultation look ahead to an ordeal in Florence.

Veronica spoke to him; she gave him all her distracted sympathy, then took it all back again in a breath. ‘There are worse things,’ she said, ‘than not being engaged to be married. I would rather do anything on earth than meet Victor just now – will you walk down with me and look for a court?’ That had been early one morning; they had stolen down to the courts together and played singles till other people began to assemble. He gave her minus-fifteen and she won their three sets. ‘You know, you musn’t let yourself go to pieces,’ she said, shaking her head at him as they walked back together. ‘You used to be good.’

‘But I’m melting away in all this!’ exclaimed Milton explosively.