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own guilty conscience. He had a way of waiting for one to speak, of creating a silence that must be filled, and such men made her uneasy at the best of times.
    She was right to be uneasy. John Archer reported to me, and he had sharp eyes and a devious mind, every bit as devious as Edgar’s; he soon let me know about this budding friendship. Perhaps I was wrong, but I decided to do nothing about it. I was curious. Edgar had had no contact with a woman for five years.
    The staff cricket field is a broad stretch of level ground fringed with pines and bordered on one side by the estate road where it passes the Raphaels’ garden on its way up to the Main Gate. Beyond the trees on the hospital side a back road runs down the hill close to the Wall, winding past the chaplain’s house, then out across the marsh. Just above this road, looking out over the cricket field and shaded by the pines, stands the pavilion. It is a graceful old wooden building with a shingled roof and a weathercock. It has a shady veranda at the front, where we sit to watch the cricket, and inside, a cool and gloomy club room with a bar.
    That summer there was always a party of patients at work in the garden of the chaplain’s house, for like Max the chaplain had embarked on a number of projects including the construction of a greenhouse. Edgar was the best carpenter we had on an outside work party, and was often needed. He moved unescorted between the two gardens, and the cricket pavilion lay close to the path he took down the hill. Stella had keys to the building, being a member of the cricket committee.
    So they had their place of assignation.
    She did have moments of sanity when she looked dispassionately at what she was doing. She describes how she drifted out onto the back lawn one evening and wandered in the moonlight over to the goldfish pond. She sat on the edge and watched the fat vague silvery shapes gliding among the lilies in the black water, and thought with a smile of Charlie’s water snakes. She gazed at the light from the drawing room as it spilled out through the French windows onto the lawn, and above it, in darkness, the open windows of Charlie’s room, the curtains stirringslightly in the breeze. She was moved suddenly by the idea of the security of her family life, its comfort and meaning and order, all of which rested squarely on Charlie and his welfare. Then she thought about this dawning adventure of hers, and it was suddenly vividly apparent to her that by indulging it she was putting that order in jeopardy. She felt then a powerful tremor of apprehension.
    The feeling stayed with her for several days and precluded any further developments. But she could not be still. One morning she went down the drive and across the road to the cricket field. It was another clear hot day; two patients in floppy white hats, and with their shirts tied around their waists, were sweating in the sunshine out in the middle of the field as they pushed the big roller back and forth. Unseen, she hoped, deep in the pines at the edge of the field, she walked around the side to the pavilion. There was an empty shed at the back where the big roller was garaged, and in the darkness she smelled fresh-cut grass and soil. She found what she was looking for, a narrow window at the back of the pavilion that could be reached from the roof of the shed.
    She came around to the front and darted up the wooden steps to the veranda. The two patients were hazy in the sunlight and there was no attendant in sight. She turned to the door of the pavilion and unlocked it.
    Inside, deck chairs were stacked against the wall. A single shaft of sunshine penetrated the gloom, lighting a patch of floorboards marked with hundreds of tiny dimpled indentations where over the years cricketers in their studded boots had stamped out from the changing room at the back. She found cushions and blankets in the storeroom and spread them on the floor. It was as she stood there gazing down at