The Aerodrome: A Love Story (14 page)

was now. As it was he was in constant danger of being sacked, and was regarded by most of the airmen as a mere half-wit who found it impossible to understand the simplest remark made to him. The deference with which he would listen both to their jokes and their instructions made him simply ridiculous. Nor did he receive much support from Mrs Wainwright, the cook, who was the only other member of the old staff who still worked at the Manor; for she was continually busy in the kitchen, and had so far adapted herself to the new conditions as to be delighted with the attentions which some of the older officers would occasionally pay her. She, too, if she passed me in the hall or in the billiard-room, would smile and perhaps say how times had changed, and other officers would ask me about the old appearance of the house, and laugh when I told them of the uses to which each room had been put, and of the articles of furniture which had now one and all been taken away. I spent most of my leisure time here, only rarely visiting the pub, which indeed began to appear to me as a somewhat sordid and uninteresting place, though I would stop there occasionally on my way to the clubhouse for a game of darts with Fred or Mac or one of the others of my old friends. Yet I knew that their attitude had altered towards me since I began to wear the Air Force uniform and I was surprised to find that I, too, was beginning to look differently upon them. I could feel that, though they expressed little resentment against the aerodrome, they still felt it; and it was a new thing in them so to conceal their thoughts. They had both failed in the preliminary examination for aircraftsmen and were now engaged in navvying work with a gang of men brought from another part of the country. The pay was good, they said, but they lost much of it through arriving late for work in the morning or by being, through drunkenness, sometimes quite unfit for duty at all. I could see that already they regretted the old régime, and noticed with some distaste the glee of the older men in the pub who now observed that their predictions were coming true; yet the old men could infuse no life themselves into these gatherings. Their remarks were either melancholy reflections or mere spitefulness. So that there was a feeling of constraint about the place which in the past had been so unconstrained, and though I felt my power as an officer among these people, and even some remains of our mutual affection, I began to see that this power and this affection were, as things stood, incompatible, that against my success they would set their own failure, against their old feelings of reckless friendship their new feelings of weakness and of dependence. And when I thought of the Air Vice-Marshal and of my own friends at the aérodrome, I wondered what these villagers could do except the most unskilled labour or what they could enjoy except the crudest pleasures. They had no sense of direction, I saw, no confidence, no initiative, and yet I was myself still wholly unaware of the real purpose of the organization to which I belonged and on which I was in reality just as dependent as was everyone else in the village. I saw Bess sometimes in the pub, but rarely spoke to her, nor did she, after a time, show any desire to speak to me, and we avoided each other's eyes. At first she had attempted to adopt a manner of easy friendliness towards me, had congratulated me on what she had heard of my successes at the aerodrome, and had shown by the look in her eyes that she was often momentarily depressed by the thought of the pain which she had caused me and would wish that pain forgotten so that her own mind might be carefree. But I, when I saw this look, was stung into a kind of anger, and I spoke to her as though we were complete strangers; for I dreaded the thought of any softening in my feelings, knowing that I could not treat her as a friend, and that if I were to allow my imagination to go further than that then my misery and insecurity would return to leave me without ambition and make me uncertain of myself and unfitted for my work. So I forced myself to appear indifferent to her, and fancied myself really to be so, and did not notice at the time symptoms in my behaviour which indicated that this was not my real feeling. I was displeased, for example, when I saw her looking happy; and when, after a little time, I noticed that she was often pale and dispirited, although there was a part of me that felt sorry, there was another part which caused me to look closely at her, estimating her distress and in a way pleased to see it. I could easily guess at its cause; for it appeared that the Flight-Lieutenant was showing much less interest in her than before and indeed was probably on the point of deserting her altogether. We all knew that he had become attached to Eustasia, the wife of the mathematician, and frequent strictures were passed upon his conduct in this connection. He was, it was said, quite ridiculously infatuated with the lady who, for her part, showed very little interest in him, and this was behaviour which, it was generally agreed, was both weak in itself and unworthy in particular of an airman. I remember wondering, when I first heard of this new intrigue, what kind of a woman this Eustasia was, and there even crossed my mind the thought that it might be interesting if I were able to supplant the Flight-Lieutenant in her affections. But it was not only in regard to Bess that the Flight-Lieutenant had changed. What surprised us all was that he began to speak seriously of his work in the village as though it had some importance of its own apart altogether from the aerodrome. He had, we were told, read in the church a longer form of service than that which was strictly necessary; he had reorganized the bellringers, who, since the occupation of the village, had given up their work; and he had made a nuisance of himself to the supply department by asking for work to be done in the strengthening of the church tower. Most surprising of all to me was the fact that he was now a frequent visitor at the house shared together by the Squire's sister and the Rector's wife, for with neither of these ladies had he been in the past at all popular. Indeed to the former of the two he had been, since his appointment, an object of actual aversion. I went very seldom to the house myself, but I remember my astonishment when, having had to go there to collect some clothes, I opened the door of the sitting-room and saw the Flight-Lieutenant sitting on the floor in front of the fire with his head resting against the arm of the chair in which the Squire's sister was sitting. There was, I observed with amazement, an expression of extraordinary tenderness on the lady's face. She was stroking with the tips of her fingers the young man's yellow hair, and opposite her on a divan was sitting the Rector's wife, smiling as though this was a scene that both pleased and interested her. When I entered the room both she and her friend looked at me with an equal kindness, as though this were some sort of family reunion. For myself I could not see it as such, having taken to heart what the Air Vice-Marshal had told us in the chapel; so I simply asked for the clothes which I had come to fetch. The Flight-Lieutenant, I observed, was somewhat embarrassed by my presence. He rose to; his feet and, when I left, said that he would accompany me. As we walked away from the house towards the club I watched him closely, for I could not tell whether his evident embarrassment was due to his thoughts about Bess or about the scene, which I had just witnessed. It was with some surprise that I realized that I was on the whole indifferent both to his feelings and to their source, that I was more assured of myself than he was, so that for a moment it seemed almost that we had changed characters; for he appeared anxious now to explain himself to me and to seek my advice, while I felt it to be probable that he had nothing very important to say. I remembered days in the past when we had walked together along this very road, and when our relation to each other had been the exact opposite of this. "It's a funny thing," he said. "I really like those two old women very much." I made no reply, and after a short pause he continued. "Particularly the old Squire's sister. You know the way she used to behave. I thought she loathed me like poison." "She isn't too fond of the aerodrome, is she?" I said. He stopped still and looked straight at me, almost, I thought, as though he were seeking to find a kind of sympathy in my face. "No," he said, "she isn't." He looked at me again anxiously as if waiting for a reply. Finally he said in a low voice: "I'm not so sure that I am either." I stared at him in consternation, but he was looking away from me. We had reached the top of the hill, and I followed his gaze over the whole valley with the straight stripped alders marking the river channel as though for navigation, the dark woods and curving pastures beyond. A heron rose flapping from the fiver. It was a midwinter windless day. I thought suddenly of how this valley would appear to me from the air and, looking at it again, felt a kind of distaste for its proximity, for its mud and reeds and the stifling nature of its life. A squadron of heavy bombers was coming towards us high overhead. I looked up at them, and heard the Flight-Lieutenant say in a somewhat apologetic tone of voice: "I sometimes wonder what it's all for." I kept my eyes on the bombers and smiled, as though he had spoken foolishly. We went on together to the club.

CHAPTER XIV

Eustasia

IT WAS NOT long after this that I met Eustasia and, oddly enough, it was the Flight-Lieutenant who introduced us to each other. During my early days at the aerodrome I had tended to avoid his company, and he had shown little readiness to seek mine; but now, whether because he had finally deserted Bess or because he was not himself much sought after by the other officers, he seemed almost to be pursuing me in my leisure hours, so that I became somewhat bored with him and with his conversation, although the changes which were evidently taking place in his character and his aims both interested and surprised me. He very seldom ventured upon any open criticism of the Air Force; for he knew that it would be unsafe to do so, and that in any case I should not have listened to anything of the kind; and yet he contrived to make it clear that his energies were no longer devoted solely to the increased efficiency and power of our organization. He spoke much of the villagers, particularly of the elder women and of the children, often commending individuals for the most unlikely qualities, for fidelity that had no rational grounds, for an honesty that was merely the result of habit, for an uncritical acceptance of conditions that were imposed from above. I would often laugh at him, and indeed he found it difficult to defend his new tastes in any coherent manner. "Somehow," he would say, "these people seem to fit better into the country, into the scenery, I mean, than we do", and if we were out of doors he would look over the valley and perhaps stretch his hand out towards it; and I would follow his gaze, often being surprised by the fact that the familiar sight of the ground no longer moved me, for I felt the view restricted, remembering how clean, how remote, and how defenceless this country would seem from a great height in the air. "What on earth does the scenery matter?" I would ask, and the Flight-Lieutenant would laugh apologetically. "Well, it's just how I feel," he would say. But our most common topic of conversation at this time was Eustasia and, when we spoke of her, I would be frequently amazed to realize the alteration which had taken place not only in the Flight-Lieutenant but in myself. He would talk most enthusiastically of this lady, crediting her with qualities which I was pretty certain she could not possess; for I knew many of the officers' wives, and knew that they were neither faithful themselves nor expected fidelity in others, that their ways of thought were aimless, and that they were almost uniquely interested in clothes, furniture, dances, and physical sensations. But when I listened to the Flight-Lieutenant it seemed to me almost as though I were listening to myself speaking in the old days about Bess; and when I laughed at his enthusiasm, since in its extent it was certainly boring, I could almost believe that it was not I but he that was speaking as he used to speak when he made light, justifiably enough I thought, of my marriage and of my ideas of contentment. What was strange, too, about this affair of his was that Eustasia, so far as I could make out, showed very little interest in him. "She often speaks of you," he would tell me, and after some time he offered to introduce me to her. "You might put in a good word for me," he said, "if you find you get on well with her." He smiled, I remember, somewhat sheepishly, and I looked at him in amazement and with some contempt. "Suppose I like the girl myself?" I asked, and was amused to see a look of fear come into his eyes. He seemed to be forcing the smile to his face. "Oh, well," he said, "all's fair." And he shrugged his shoulders. "All the same though..." I remembered suddenly how he had spoken these words outside the hut, and I looked at him sharply. Even though I attached very little importance to this affair, I knew that if I could, without much trouble, do him an injury, then I would do so. He looked at me again, almost with an apologetic air, as though he could read my thoughts, and arranged to call with me on Eustasia on the following day. She lived in one of the flats for officers' wives that were built at the extreme edge of the aerodrome near the gates opening on to the road. I remember that what struck me first was the extraordinary untidiness of her room. Papers covered with figures were scattered over the floor; open boxes of chocolates and of powder lay about on the divan that extended along one wall; and on the mantelpiece were half-empty bottles of scent and of face lotion. Yet the furniture was both tasteful and expensive. There was a feeling of space about the room, and the chairs and tables were of wood, rather than of metal, unlike the furniture of the rooms which I had so far visited. I felt at once that the occupant must be distinguished in some way from the majority of women at the aerodrome, whose habits were precise and whose tastes stereotyped. And in this view I was certainly not mistaken. We were left to ourselves for some moments, during which time the Flight-Lieutenant talked to me in a whisper, as though we were in some place of worship, and I answered him in a loud voice, for I was for some reason annoyed by his sheepish air. We heard from an adjoining room the noise of bath-water running out, and soon the door of this room opened and Eustasia appeared, wearing a white silk dressing-gown covered with large purple flowers. She stood for a moment looking at the Flight-Lieutenant and laughing; then she turned her eyes on me and seemed, I thought, for a second the least bit embarrassed. She frowned and tossed back into place a loose lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead. Then she stepped towards me, holding out her hand. "Sorry to be receiving you in this way," she said, and smiled again, with her large eyes fixed full on mine. Later on we both said that in this first look we each had realized what would happen to us after and, in a certain generalized way, this was true. But I saw, too, in her brown eyes, and did not tell her, not only that she could easily be drawn to me, but also, in spite of their bravado, a softness and an honesty which rather depressed me; for I had no mind to take her or any other woman very seriously. For a moment she seemed to me like a child performing with great success the rôle of a sophisticated and self-confident woman. Yet this impression was soon worn away from my mind as she began to move somewhat clumsily about the room, pouring out drinks for us, and talking rapidly in a loud voice about her dressing-gown and the lotion which, after she had served us, she proceeded to rub into her face. Her conversation was interrupted by the Flight-Lieutenant's interjections of agreement or approval, and, whenever she stopped speaking, he would at once speak himself with such a nervous eagerness that nearly everything which he said seemed pointless and unnecessary. I watched Eustasia closely as she wrapped her dressing-gown more tightly round her and began to do her hair in front of a mirror that hung upon the wall. There was something masculine in the directness of her eyes and in the forward set of her jaw--still more, perhaps, in the confidence and assertion of her voice; yet her ears and hands were remarkably delicate, and her body, though tall and upright, suggested a certain frailty, seeming too soft to be athletic. I said very little, but looked back and forward from her to the Flight-Lieutenant who, in my opinion, was merely making himself ridiculous; for though Eustasia, as she passed his chair, would occasionally pat him on the head and would also occasionally show that she had listened to one or other of his remarks, it was quite clear that she felt no affection for him whatever. After a time she had completed her toilet and came to sit on the divan at my side. "I've been looking forward to meeting you," she said, "because I've heard such a lot about you from my husband. You've got yourself a very good reputation already." "It's nothing like his," I said, thinking of the demonstration of aerobatics which I had seen. Eustasia laughed. "No, of course not. He's very, very famous. But being very successful isn't everything, is it?" I was not so sure. Her large eyes were turned fully upon mine, as though looking for something there which was difficult to discover. I found myself smiling in a kind of amusement at the sudden seriousness of her expression. The Flight-Lieutenant made some remark to which neither of us replied. "How do you like being married?" I asked. She stretched her legs out in front of her with the palms of her hands resting on her thighs. "Oh, all right," she said, "so long as I can get my young men." She was smiling slowly, and I thought of her as of some huge cat, lazily extending her limbs to the sun. She looked up, not at me, but at the Flight-Lieutenant, whose face wore an expression of almost idiotic anxiety. "Go and get us some cigarettes," she said, and he hurriedly left the room. After he had gone we sat for some moments in silence. I kept my eyes on the pattern of the carpet, a decoration of small intertwined snakes among ivy leaves, and for some reason my mind went back to the time when I had been sitting on the bed with Bess's mother and had so closely examined the patchwork quilt. Now I felt the same intensity in the atmosphere between the two of us, the certainty that some word or action of extraordinary significance was impending, but this time I was master of myself, and I watched Eustasia out of the corner of my eye, since I felt no urge in myself to make the first move. She was sitting with her head thrust slightly forward, and on her broad determined face was a look of such softness that I was startled; for all the stubbornness and self-will and strain seemed to have gone from her face, leaving it with a strange purity like an April sky, so that she appeared unearthly, a spirit whose whole essence was compassion. Yet I could feel the divan dented by her heavy limbs, and saw the blood just pulsing in a tiny vein above one cheek. I looked again down at the carpet and smiled, for I found the excitement exhilarating and knew that I would not give myself away. When she stretched out one hand and laid it on my knee, the gesture seemed the most natural and inevitable one in the world, and at once the vague intensity that had surrounded us began to find a habitation in the limbs and in the mind. I turned towards her and put my hand on her thigh and noticed her eyelids tremble as my fingers pressed upon the warm flesh. For a second or two we looked at each other. There was still the same softness in her eyes, but her lips had begun to smile. Suddenly her eyes lit up with a flash of gaiety; she put her arms round my neck and kissed me on the mouth; then with her hands locked behind my head she leant back, looking mischievously at me, and said: "Now you know." I pulled her towards me and began to kiss her the more ravenously, and with the greater pleasure because this affair had started so easily, was so simple, and seemed so unlikely to affect the general conduct of my life. The vigour and assurance of her love-making both surprised and delighted me, so that for some moments I was, as they say, speechless with desire, although in a part of my mind I was secretly amused by what was happening and, even when our lips were pressed tightly together, I told myself that whatever might come of this I was certainly determined not to be hurt myself. Yet, in spite of these feelings, the sudden warmth of her seemed to melt something in me and, when we drew apart, I looked at her with gratitude. At some time during these proceedings the Flight-Lieutenant had returned, but neither Eustasia nor I had observed his entry. He now stood looking down on us with one hand in front of his mouth, as though he were about to cough. We looked at him and at each other, and burst out laughing, for his appearance, though some might have found it pathetic, was certainly ridiculous. He noticed that he was observed, but did not seem to notice the effect that he made. To my great surprise he flopped down upon the floor at Eustasia's side and laid his head close to her thigh, gently rubbing his cheek against the material of her dress. I looked at him closely and saw that his shoulders were heaving. Then on the cheek that was turned away from me I caught sight of a tear. Eustasia was patting his head as one might pat, somewhat absent-mindedly, a dog. Sometimes, with a kind of perplexity in her expression, she looked down at him; sometimes she turned to me and smiled, as though claiming my sympathy and asking my forgiveness for the part which she was forced to take in this scene. Once, as she faced me, she pursed up her lips, and I leant towards her and kissed them. Meanwhile the Flight-Lieutenant was speaking incoherently. He said that she was the only woman at the aerodrome who perfectly understood him; that she alone could sympathize with him in his hatred of the perpetual constraint in which he was forced to live; that there was no one else to whom he dared speak his mind; that he realized that he had lost her, but would still be grateful for any attention, however small, that she could give him. Such was the sense of what he was saying in a confused and broken voice, and Eustasia continued until he had finished to pat the top of his head or the side of his face. I looked at him with mixed feelings. It would be untrue to say that I experienced no pleasure in seeing him in this broken-down state; but at the same time I was horrified by his abjectness and, what was most strange, in some part of my mind I actually resented it, feeling for a moment that, even in this humiliation, he had somehow stolen an advantage over me. For I knew that I could leave the room now, never see Eustasia again, and still be none the worse for that; but he, it appeared, had discovered in her something that he was most reluctant to lose, and in this discovery he might, for all I knew, be showing a finer insight than any of which I was capable. This thought passed from me in a moment as Eustasia turned her head towards me, raising her eyebrows as though to enlist my help. I knew clearly that I would not exchange his state for mine. He had become quieter now, but was still mechanically rubbing his cheek against her dress. She pulled his head back by the hair and smiled at him. "There, there," she said, "never mind. You can come and see me as often as you like. Of course, we shall always be friends." Then she began to draw away from him, and he put one clenched hand on the floor, pushing himself to his feet. He stood looking at us hesitatingly as a nervous guest might look, uncertain whether or not the hour has arrived at which he may properly depart. I particularly noticed his rumpled hair and the fact that a white thread was clinging to the elbow of his uniform. I raised my eyes to his face and saw that he was
looking at me in a very odd manner. There was no resentment or anger in him, I could swear; it was rather as though he were about to excuse himself for something, but was searching in vain for an appropriate form of words, or else that he had a statement to make of so surprising a character that it could only be introduced with the greatest diffidence. I went quickly to the door and opened it for him. So the Flight-Lieutenant left us and we became lovers. For many weeks I spent some part of every day or night with Eustasia, and in all this time there was no moment of uneasiness, far less unhappiness, between us. Our first love-making had seemed easy, natural, and inevitable. Every later occasion improved our love. For though we had no deliberation, no forethoughts or afterthoughts, and though I certainly thought very little of her when I was on duty at the aerodrome, this very absence of intermediate reflection seemed to me to make our meetings more delightful, for every meeting revealed to me something new of the tricks of her mind or her body. And everything was surprising; for I had not seen her from the first as a creature ideally shaped by my own imagination, reflecting back to me the colours of my own desires or fancied needs. Rather it had been the reverse of this; for, since the moment when I first heard the Flight-Lieutenant speak of her, I had thought of her as a person whom I would find to be much like any other of the officers' wives, not to be treated very seriously, or not for long. Thus I was surprised and almost shocked to find the reality so much exceed the imagination in strength, in warmth, in vividness, and in surety of outline. I was flattered, too, no doubt, by the strength of the feeling which she had for me, and was half-conscious, though without any uneasiness, that my own feelings for her, though strong enough, were of a wholly different order. From her I got joy alone, but from me she seemed to obtain joy and something more, something that would cause her at times to cling close to me as though she were wishing to secure a possession that, however wide the circuit of her limbs and fingers, might without care slip from her; and at such moments there would be a look of passionate concentration on her face, a look which would surprise me, since for my part I had what I wanted at least for the moment in my arms, and had no thought for anything else. Often she would speak to me about love, and I would listen with interest and perplexity, and sometimes with amusement; for I remembered the time when I, too, was in the habit of theorizing on this subject, while now I felt no need to hold any clear idea of it, and was indeed surprised by the vehemence and sincerity of Eustasia's words. She had never been faithful for long to any one person, and yet her love affairs filled by far the most important place in her life. I would often find myself smiling when she made it clear in our conversation that in comparison with her own sexual life she regarded even the aerodrome and its organization as a thing of quite secondary importance; and I saw that there would be no use in arguing such points with her or in protesting against what seemed to me at this time a charming piece of selfishness. But I would question her about her former lovers and she would speak about nearly all of them with affection, with amusement, and with a kind of gratitude. It did not seem strange to her, far less disgraceful, that she should have deserted them all; indeed she would never have admitted that this was what had taken place; for long after any one of them had parted company with her she took a keen interest in his doings and, as a rule, retained his friendship. To the Flight-Lieutenant in his present distress she showed a kind of sympathy which, while it was not love, was certainly far from indifference. "It's a pity," she would say, "that people should get so upset, but it's inevitable and it soon passes. What's really unforgivable is to pretend to feel love when you've ceased to feel it." "How long are you going to feel it for me?" I would sometimes ask her, and as a rule she would laugh and begin to kiss me as a reply; and at such moments I would feel peculiarly comfortable, for I knew that I had not only her in my thoughts, but also the excitement of a most promising career and the ability to attract the affection of other women at the aerodrome, many of whom already seemed to me desirable. Not that this fact made me any the less happy with Eustasia. I was completely pleased with the position in which I found myself. I very rarely thought now of those few months in the past when I had presumed myself to be happy with Bess, and when I did so I found it impossible to compare my present feelings with the feelings that I had had then. I remembered chiefly the pain of the night before I had entered the Air Force, and began to imagine that in the elation and extravagance of feeling which I could still recall there must always have been present an uncertainty and a dissatisfaction enough to make that period of my life less pleasurable than was my life now. Eustasia often spoke to me of Bess, for she had heard previously of the whole affair from the Flight-Lieutenant; and though I was willing enough to talk to her on this or any subject, I sometimes found myself hesitating over my answers to her questions, not because of any timidity in myself, but because of the difficulty in my present surroundings of luxury and confidence to envisage the tin hut above the village, the cheap home-made dresses that Bess used to wear, and the recklessness of my own emotions. It would be hard also to say whether I was more pleased or displeased by the slighting way in which Eustasia often spoke of Bess. I had heard that, since the Flight-Lieutenant had left her, she had suffered an almost complete collapse, and had seldom left her room in the pub. I had not been altogether sorry to hear this, and yet something in me had prevented me from allowing my mind to dwell too precisely on the state in which she must have been living. Now, when I was content myself, I began to feel a wish, not to assist her, but that in some way or other I might know that she was not unhappy. I remember once saying something of this kind to Eustasia, and I can remember exactly when I said it. It was during one of the dances in the glass ballroom on the Manor roof and, althought it was a cold night, we had taken coats and gone out together into the garden, since Eustasia wished to look at the full moon shining on the loops of the river and on the bare branches of those trees in the meadows which had not yet been cut down. We could hear the music pounding behind our backs and, if we turned round, could see high up in the air the figures in uniform or in bright dresses laughing and swaying inside the glass. We sat down on a seat between two juniper bushes whose small starry leaves were silvered over by the moonlight. I forget how it was that we had begun to talk of Bess, but when I mentioned somewhat vaguely my wish that she should be happy, Eustasia laughed and took my hand inside her coat. "Don't bother yourself," she said. "She'll soon find someone else. Women like that never really know what they want. They're always either up or down, I know the type well." I made no reply. I had fixed my eyes on that part of the river where I remembered having bathed on the night when I had discovered Bess and the Flight-Lieutenant together. The incident seemed to me now to have taken place a very long time ago. Eustasia turned her head towards me, but I continued to look down on the river. I felt her press my hand before she spoke. "Supposing Bess were to love you like I love you," she said, "would you like to go back to her?" As she spoke my body stiffened and I became conscious of the beating of my heart. Her ringers were twining into my fingers, but though I was aware of this my own hand remained limp and unresponsive. Unaccountably I seemed to see myself as I had been nearly a year ago, lying in the mud of Gurney's meadow, with Fred and Mac going away from me into the night. This scene seemed to me infinitely depressing and at the same time almost dreadful, for I could connect it in no way with my present way of life, with the discipline and the dances and the fighter squadron to which I was now attached. I was conscious, too, as I had not been a moment before, of the smells and sounds of the winter night, and could envisage clearly the appearance of the stars between the boughs of the elm trees in the meadow where I had lain. I felt Eustasia move closer to me, so that her head rested on my shoulder. I turned to her and said: "All that part of my life seems to have vanished away entirely", and I was astonished at the gravity with which I spoke, for in a part of my mind, whose promptings I rejected, I knew and was shocked to know that what I was saying was untrue. I noticed that Eustasia's face also was unusually grave, and I changed my tone. "Maybe I've got more sense now," I said, and smiled as I took her in my arms. She clung to me then, I remember, as though this were our first meeting after months of separation. More than any night that I can remember there was excitement and a kind of desperation in our love-making that night. Later when we were on our way back to the dance Eustasia held my arm tightly between her hands. "Some day soon I'm going to tell you a secret," she said, but in spite of all my efforts refused to say then what the secret was.