‘Poor thing,’ said Cilia. ‘She spends every penny she earns trying to get cured. She hopes that then she’ll find a husband.’

‘But don’t all women know how to get a husband?’

‘I’ve already found mine,’ Cilia smiled.

‘Suppose what happened to Amalia had happened to you?’ I sneered.

Cilia came close to me. ‘Wouldn’t you want me any more?’

‘No.’

‘But what’s upset you this evening? Don’t you like Amalia to come up here? She gives me work and helps me …’

What had got into me – and I couldn’t get rid of it – was the thought that Cilia was just another Amalia. I felt disgusted and furious with both of them. My eyes were hard as I stared at Cilia, and the tender look she gave me only made me pity her, irritating me still more. On my way home I had met a husband with two dirty brats clinging round his neck, and behind him a thin worn-out little woman, his wife. I imagined what Cilia would look like when she was old and ugly, and the thought clutched me by the throat.

Outside, the stars were shining. Cilia looked at me in silence. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I told her with a bitter smile, and I went out.

4.

I had no friends and I realized, now and then, that Cilia was my whole life. As I walked the streets I thought about us and felt troubled that I did not earn enough to repay her by keeping her in comfort, so that I needn’t feel ashamed when I went home. I never wasted a penny – I did not even smoke – and, proud of that, I considered my thoughts were at least my own. But what could I make of those thoughts? On my way home I looked at people and wondered how so many of them had managed to succeed in life. Desperately I longed for changes, for something fresh and exciting.

I used to hang around the railway station, thrilled by the smoke and the bustle. For me, good fortune has always meant adventure in faraway places – a liner crossing the ocean, arrival at some exotic port, the clang of metal, shrill, foreign voices – I dreamt of it all the time. One evening I stopped short, terrified by the sudden realization that if I didn’t hurry up and travel somewhere with Cilia while she was still young and in love with me, I should never go at all. A fading wife and a squalling child would, for ever, prevent me. If only we really had money, I thought again. You can do anything with money.

Good fortune must be deserved, I told myself. Shoulder every load that life may bring. I am married but I do not want a child. Is that why I’m so wretched? Should I be luckier if I had a son?

To live always wrapped up in oneself is a depressing thing, because a brain that is habitually secretive does not hesitate to follow incredibly stupid trains of thought that mortify the man who thinks them. This was the only origin of the doubts that plagued me.