And then, said Eve, you sit with your legs in Epsom salts. Right up to the knees.

Mrs Standish in her drawing-room felt that she had learnt by heart all the conversation she had ever made. She had learnt it on marrying Willy, something acquired with her attractive room, the Liberty curtains and the chiming clock. But soon it will all be over, she said. I shall go upstairs and take off my clothes, I shall lie in my bed, I. She cut herself short. She held herself rigid, as brittle as a conversational phrase. Yes, yes, YES, she said, through words, or sleep, or the chiming of a gilt clock. The French face on the mantelpiece had creamy eyes.

When they were alone again, she felt it very forcibly. Willy and herself alone in a house. Because this was what it amounted to, the children sleeping, and Julia Fallon. The little boy moved his head in his cot. A hot and sleepy protest came, from a long distance, out of his half-closed mouth. If I were asleep, she said, that sick pounding she became, her stomach. She slipped on a gown and went through into the dressing room.

Willy, she said.

He was standing in his shirt tails, scratching his head.

Willy, I want to talk, she said.

Mm? he said. At this time of night!

Yes, she said. Because, you see, because it’s like this, she said.

Her clasped hands offered no assistance to the word, were lumped together ineffectually, except as a guard against trembling perhaps.

There’s a lot we’ve got to decide, she said.

What are you talking about? he asked.

He had stopped scratching his head.

Mme Adorée says.

Her voice shouted.

Mme Adorée says. It’s all so absurd, she faltered. And going into her workroom, Willy. And all that, she said.

His mouth had grown tighter.

I think you’re getting hysterical, he said.

That focused the blurring line. She felt she was standing on the carpet, even if her breath caught still, and words escaped from her control.

I suppose I haven’t an interest?

You don’t often show it, he said.

It made her want to dramatize. It gave her movement. All the moments she had lived with Willy crested over in a wave of pity for herself.

No? she said, harshly. And the times I’ve been shown it wasn’t wanted. What about those? Those don’t count, I suppose?

All right, he said. We’ve made a mess. For God’s sake, let’s leave it at that.

But this was more than she could do, control the impetus of words that jostled for expression.

And Maudie Westmacott? We’ve got to ignore that. And shopgirls in the basement? And all the misery, she said, her voice keeling over here, all the misery of deceiving.

You make me tired. You’re ludicrous, he said.

Which made it worse, because she was just that, blurting, blathering, she knew, so much that accumulated over the evening and the evenings of years. She felt her whole ludicrousness, physically, and the ludicrousness of badly spoken words.