She was so beautiful as she said that, that Ronald might have interrupted, protested, told her that she wasn’t old, but young—would always be young. But he was awed by her strange, rapt manner. She spoke dreamily, like one delivering oracles:

“I think that if one has been very very happy for part of one’s life, then nothing else matters.”

She added, after a moment, as though pursuing the same line of thought:

“I wish you and Richard could have known each other. I think you would have had a great deal in common.”

He sat quite silent, could not reply. She smiled. She said quite simply:

“I’ve sometimes felt that he is pleased we are friends.”

*   *   *

The lift slid down its shaft. He had passed out of the flat, it seemed, like a somnambulist; was walking with long strides through the lamplit streets.

Now, at last, he could value, as never before, the beauty of his treasure—their friendship. Walking erect like a hero, swinging his umbrella, he knew himself to be the most fortunate, the most privileged, as the most unworthy of living men. And this great happiness was not realised too late, about to come to an end. It would go on and on. Week would follow week. I shall see her, he thought. I shall speak to her. We shall have tea together. We shall talk.

And to think that only this morning he’d been tormenting himself with ridiculous madman’s hopes, schemes, illusions. He had considered his meagre bank balance, his pension, his little flat. Yes, he’d been ready to commit that supreme folly, that insolence. They could never have met again. He saw now that she’d have interpreted his proposal as a sort of treachery, a betrayal of his trust, his honoured position. He was ready to agree now that it would have been a betrayal.

How beautifully she had saved him from that folly, the misery of her refusal. How beautifully she’d indicated what their relationship must be. She must have read his thoughts, for surely her every word that afternoon had been a warning, exquisitely conveyed. How gladly he accepted it. For he knew now that he could be of some small service to her, and that was all he had ever really hoped. It was enough of happiness.

If I had met her as a boy, he thought—not supposing that then things might have happened otherwise, but thinking: If I had met her then, how much better my life would have been. It is women like her, he thought, who raise men from the brutes they are. Without them we could be nothing. She is a saint, he thought. I have known a saint.

*   *   *