“Oh, no, Jessie. It isn’t queer people who do that — it’s people just like everyone else — like you or me — if ever we were driven to it.”

“Well, I don’t want to argue. She’s got to go, that’s all.”

“But Gerald —”

“He must learn to manage without her. I’m sure she’s doing him no real good.”

Then David, planting himself firmly on a small fragment of endangered territory, took a stand which was all the more obstinate for being minute. He was not really a good fighter. He hated squabbles and it was never easy for him to grasp such issues as could be involved in them. “She can’t go before the end of the month,” he said, as if pronouncing a moral dictum or an immutable law.

“She can if I pay her.”

“It isn’t a matter of paying. You can’t act suddenly like this and make her find new work and new lodgings at a moment’s notice.”

“I don’t see that her future plans have anything to do with us.”

“Maybe not, but I think we ought to treat her as a human being. We can’t just give her a few shillings and put her out in the street.”

“You say we can’t?”

“I say we mustn’t.”

“Very well, if that’s your attitude she shall stay till her month is finished — which means another fortnight of her company. But don’t expect me to leave Gerald with her. You can look after the girl’s interests; I prefer to look after my own child’s … And now tell me about these invitations to the musical party — do you want the Cowens to come this year or not?”

David shook his head bewilderedly and walked to the door. When he got there he said “Ask them if you like,” and passed into the corridor. He moved absently for a few paces, then his feet led him down the three familiar steps and through the green-baize-covered double doors into the surgery. There, entrenched in his own domain, he felt a little but not greatly eased. Of course it was quite true that in a cathedral town there was a lot of gossip, and Jessica, nearer to it in her daily contacts, was probably surer in reckoning its importance. And also, of course, so long as Leni could get another job as good or better, it didn’t really matter to her. He would write her a testimonial if she wasn’t fit for a theatre job, and perhaps, with her knowledge of German, she might find work as a teacher or in some firm. And though he would personally miss her, and he knew Gerald would too, her absence could only put back everything as it had been before, even for the boy. He smoked for a while and tried in vain to put the whole confusing issue out of his mind; till at last, far after midnight, his thoughts grew weary, pacifying him into a sense of communion with all other souls awake at that hour, with every striving puzzling soul beneath the roofs of Calderbury.