“I know. I miss it, too,” I said, my heart suddenly bleeding for Sina. And although I’d been too busy, really, to miss it until now, as she mentioned it, I began to miss it, too. It was tempting to throw Winifred out and pull Sina in. All my life Sina and I had been in the habit of sharing our sunset hour. But no, Winifred was terribly worried about her father. Her need was real. I must not abandon her.

“So I thought I would come in and spend a little time. I don’t want to go to the landing because lately my experience is that as soon as we alight somewhere we are suddenly crawling with people the way an open honey jar collects ants. But I thought I’d pay you a little visit in here, where no one would find us.”

“That would be nice, Sina,” I said while Winifred pinched me and shook her head, “but I’m, as I said, almost asleep. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

But oh, I thought, these bonds of intimacy we have with our friends, based so often on loyalty and habit and the type of good talk I can always count on with Sina, can so easily be destroyed in a second by misunderstanding. It would level me if so it went for Sina and me.

“Well…” said Sina. “Just let me come in and say goodnight, then.”

“The door is locked,” I said. That much was true. Winifred had locked it. Thank goodness one of us had foresight. “And I’m too tired to open it.”

“Oh,” said Sina. I could hear her backing away. And again my heart broke for her. She really was, for such a towering person, very sensitive. “All right then. Well, good night.”

“Good night, Sina,” I said.

There was quiet and we could hear her walking away and saying to herself in low tones, “They outgrow you. Of course, they do.”

I called through the door. “I’ll never outgrow you, Sina.” But she had already gone into her own room and I heard her door close and I don’t think she heard me.

“Never mind,” said Winifred, who, in her own way, was quite single-minded and heartless. “She’ll get over it. Look, there’s the hermit.”

And sure enough he was making his way across the field, and then he opened the gate to the night garden.

“He doesn’t climb over the fence, he uses a key!” I said, outraged. “How did he get a key? Old Tom said that lock has been rusted shut for years.”