From Jane. He might have known he wouldn’t hear the end of that business in a hurry. He might have known he was a fool to suppose she would let him go without making difficulties. That week-end in Cornwall—it had been pleasant enough but before it was over he’d known he was in for trouble. Damn it all, women were never fair—never. They talked about leading their own lives, said they wanted to get their experience like men, and then broke all the rules of the game. He glanced again over the letter. She reminded him that she had “given herself” to him (what nonsense that was. She’d wanted it as much as he had!), that their families had been neighbours in Dorset for generations before her father went bankrupt. He flinched away from the imputation of disloyalty which, since he was a tolerably honest and conservative man, made him profoundly uncomfortable. She said he’d treated her as though she was a suburban pick-up. He wished fretfully that she had been. She wrote that she was going to a post in a private nursing-home. Would he write to her at the Nurses’ Club? Up to this point the letter had apparently been written with a certain amount of self-control but from then onwards O’Callaghan saw, with something like horror, that Jane’s emotions had run away with her pen. She loved him but what had she left to offer him? she asked. Must they both forget? She was fighting for her soul and nothing was too desperate. There was a devil tearing at her soul and if she lost him it would get her. She added again that she loved him and that if he persisted in ignoring her she would do something terrible. With a sudden petulant gesture he crumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it on the fire.

“Blast!” he said. “Blast! Blast! Blast!”

There was a light tap on the door which opened far enough to disclose a large nose, a vague mouth, a receding chin, and a gigantic ear-ring.

“Affairs of state, Derry?” asked a coy voice. “Affairs of state?”

“Oh, come in, Ruth,” said Sir Derek O’Callaghan.

CHAPTER TWO

Introduces a Patent Medicine

Friday, the fifth. Evening.

DURING THE FOLLOWING week the Home Secretary followed his usual routine. He had become more or less accustomed to the attacks of pain. If anything they occurred more often and with increasing severity. He told himself that the day after he had introduced his Bill, he would consult a doctor. Meanwhile he took three tablets of aspirin whenever the pain threatened to become unendurable, and grew more and more dispirited and wretched. The memory of Jane Harden’s letter lurked at the back of his thoughts, like a bad taste in the conscience.