‘Aren’t you going to burn them?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were spring-cleaning and getting rid of rubbish.’

‘Must you go on hurting me?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ I said miserably. ‘Oh, Terry, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, now,’ she replied. ‘I felt low for a minute. I thought I might be a bother to you, or getting on your nerves. You’re not angry because I want to do spring-cleaning, are you, Hugh?

‘I knew this was bound to happen,’ she said a little later. ‘We were too exalted these past weeks.’

‘It was such fine weather,’ I said, ‘and now there’s an east wind.’

‘It was lovely weather; but Hugh, we must keep a note of what happens.’

‘For the foxes to read when they’ve their den to themselves again?’ I asked with renewed bitterness.

‘For ourselves to read, and other people, when this is all over.’

‘What if it’s never all over and we crouch here till we die, and the world goes back to savagery—have you thought of how it’ll be when we grow too old to skulk and hide and make shifts and stalk deer for to-morrow’s dinner? Shall we come to thrive on grass and heather, or simply starve—what heart can I have for writing?’

‘If you were crouching in a trench, Hugh, in wet and mud, and I was crouching in a cellar waiting for the sound of aeroplanes, and bad news—you’d have a certainty that we’d both crouch there for ever—and help the world back to savagery. If you’re unhappy here and hankering to go, you hurt me more by staying. I’m not going with you. I can’t chop and change my mind every time there’s water in the wind. I came here and here I stay until the world changes its mind, for I’ll not change mine.’

‘What is there to write,’ I asked, ‘except the days of the week, and you mark that? Nothing happens; I haven’t a pencil—’

‘I have pencil and paper too,’ she began in a matter-of-fact voice. But her voice trembled and she exclaimed, ‘I hope nothing ever happens!’ and then she commenced to laugh and cry alternately, saying, ‘Hugh, I couldn’t bear to lose you, I couldn’t live without you, I’d sooner be dead. You won’t leave me ever, will you? I don’t care what happens to the world if I have you.’