But we shan’t ignore it, she persisted.

She beat her hands on the dressing-table. She heard the bottles rattle.

If you think I’m going to stand, he said.

Go on then, she said. Go on!

He had begun to put on his trousers again.

That’s just what I’m doing, he said.

His voice was over-high.

The world’s big enough for the two of us, shouted Willy Standish, or it seemed like that.

I’m sure, she cried, matching his voice. Go on, she said. We’ll see.

We’ll see? I know? he shouted.

Ssh! she cried. You’ll wake the child.

Damn the child, Willy said.

That was too much, too much bitterness, together with her ludicrous face that watched her in the glass. She felt the hot approach of tears. Through the door the child had begun to cry. She went back into the other room. The child turned in his bed and cried. She held his head too tightly against her.

Darling! she cried, crying with him. Poor darling. My poor, poor darling. You mustn’t be unhappy, she said.

But she could not control the spasms of her crying, as she held the child against her body, and this translated itself to the body of her child. He cried with her, but with the desperation of a child, for there was no reason for any of this.

Poor darling, she kept on moaning.

She listened to her own voice.

3

Ssh! She cried. You’ll wake the child.

He watched the little thread of light stretched underneath the door. It cut across the darkness separating him from all that. The other room was all sound and light. You thought it was going to burst.

Damn the child! the room shouted.

His jaw faltered. He was alone in darkness, in the dark tunnel, pushed there, held there by the voice. And at the other end was the sound of milk, and Julia stroking the light on beans. He had that hot moistening of the throat. And the hot fever of sheets that was more than the fever of bronchitis. He could not get his legs out of the plaster of sheets. He could not run back to where Julia switched off the light, her kiss. He was lost between darkness and the frightening separate noises in the other room. So he began to cry. It consumed him. He was his own crying. He groped towards morning with his hot hands.

Then the door opened and she came in. She held him, and this was frightening too. Because she was crying. She was crying for the lost morning.

Poor darling, she kept crying.

He could not move against wet silk.

You mustn’t be unhappy, she said.

But her voice didn’t convince. He wasn’t sure that she was any farther from being afraid. He wished it was Julia, both because he wanted to know if Julia had escaped the night, and because Julia never cried, except she said her tooth was bad, then Julia cried.