‘And that’s all the thanks I get,’ he said to himself. Really, he did not wish for thanks. He had a disagreeable impression that in some way he had compromised himself by relieving Miss St John of her crumb. The act, no larger than the crumb, stuck in his gizzard. Perhaps it symbolized too plainly his return to civilian life—the come-down, from loosing death, yourself in danger of extinction, on a hundred people all glitteringly unknown, to being obliging to old hags who would be better dead anyhow.

Yet he continued to be obliging. Obligingness was enforced on him by his appearance. His curls were the genuine gold his mother’s pretended to be. His smiles were as frequent as hers, but naturally much fresher, since there had not been so many of them. He obliged as nimbly as Ganymede, a militarized Ganymede with a toothbrush moustache.

When a similar moustache, but occupying at least ten foot of the screen, was presented to Miss St John’s gaze on the following Tuesday, it quite broke up her usual calm conviction that she was enjoying herself at the cinema. Normally, Miss St John’s afternoons at the cinema did not involve her in feelings of participation. Love-stories and crime-stories passed indifferently before her eyes. She was not interested in love, or in crime. What she looked for on the screen was continuity, one thing happening after another, as in the biographies, and, as in the biographies, handsome 98backgrounds with expanses of marble, or table-damask, or the Pacific ocean. But from the moment of apprehending a moustache like Dennis’s, Miss St John’s attention was engaged. Whether it lowered for a kiss, twitched in anger, was halted in a close-up or darted about no larger than a hornet among cactus-groves and religious processions, she watched it and watched nothing else. On her way out she saw Dennis also leaving the cinema. She hastened on, to make sure, at least, of her rightful chair; for it seemed to her inevitable that her tea would be spoilt by Dennis’s company, and that he would try to talk to her about the film. ‘I shall say it was a bad one,’ she said to herself.

But no one came into the lounge except a wretched woman with a cold in her head. A few glances, a raising of the eyebrows whenever she sneezed, was enough to keep her well away from the fireside. After a leisurely tea Miss St John lit one of her infrequent cigarettes. The chair was deep, and dry logs crackled in the grate, contrasting pleasantly with the patter of rain against the window. Even the gasps and snuffles of the woman with a cold became tolerable. To their accompaniment Miss St John reflected on the advantages of Permanence. She had been prepared to say a few words to Mrs Fry about that boy of hers hanging about in the lounge. But no words had been necessary. Mrs Fry could take a hint. The cake, too, had been fresh. Miss St John opened her book. Just now it was a royal favourite. Coming on the photograph of a general, his moustache seemed to her no more than a detail of military discipline.99