She realized, with disapproval, that she had passed from her state of gratitude, that state which is designed expressly for a Connie Tiarks, like a standing cup of Bengers. You were brought up on thankfulness, on the warmth of practised gratitude, it became a comfort greater than religion. Without it, the water grew tepid in the bath, the nose obtrusively catarrhal. And taking stock of herself, Connie Tiarks had to admit that this had happened. She could no longer make the best of the worst. She had to take out on someone her resentment at other people’s writing on other walls. Even the brighter mornings were gritty on the face, her stomach a little sick in Kensington High, she counted the days to renewed humiliation in Mrs Standish’s drawing-room.

Harry Allgood told her she was moody.

She told Harry not to be tiresome, it was his choice seeing her, anyway, there was no reason to phone. Then she relented. Because she was taking it out on Harry Allgood. Even while taking it out she was sometimes ashamed, she found, gladly, it was a sign that she had not suffered a complete moral, yes, moral collapse. Because Connie took herself seriously. She had to find moral reasons for things.

I’m sorry, Harry, she said, catching sight of his red knuckles, the knuckles always made it worse.

Harry Allgood was a born recipient of other people’s spleen. He took it as a matter of course. He waited. He was very good at waiting. He could sit on a chair waiting in a hall, and somehow the clock-beat remained the right side of his skin, he sat there smelling of stale tobacco and tweed. In her remaining grateful moments Connie accepted the smell of Harry Allgood’s coat, its nearness, the chance contact with tweed, for this was never deliberate. It was not a deliberate relationship, anyway on Connie’s side, forming out of the letters of aunts, the meeting outside Swan and Edgar’s, the risotto in a Soho restaurant. Harry Allgood sat looking at his hands, or more intently into her face, that did not return from another situation. He told her about the hospital. The anecdotes of Harry Allgood anaesthetized the mind, its foreground released it on an errand of calculation and retrospect. Then she felt, through Harry’s voice, I have never said anything to Elyot, never, never, nothing that matters. Her conversation with Elyot became, in its turn, a cloud of anecdote that anaesthetized, she could see it in Elyot’s face. So that when, on successive occasions, Harry suggested a second cup of coffee, she was irritated, she frowned, she said: No, thank you, Harry, coffee always keeps me awake. As if she wanted to fall asleep there and then, over the bread-sticks in a Soho restaurant.