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hurrying, and then she was gone. He came back to the department and paid the assistant for the torn dress. Maureen had vanished too. You taught me how to love you. Now teach me to forget.
    As he waited at home for Janie to come back he felt that the quality of time had altered, perhaps forever. She did not come until the late evening. Janie made him take her to see Maureen. How had she made him? That terrible sense of being punished. Thrusting in front of him she went into Maureen’s flat first and locked the door. He could hear Janie’s voice speaking on the other side of the door and then the sound of Maureen crying. He knocked on the door, calling to be let in. The other lodgers in the house came out of their rooms to watch. They mocked him. ‘His wife’s telling off his mistress!’ ‘Been found out, have you?’ ‘Hard luck, old man.’ They laughed. Bruno went home. More waiting.
    He never saw Maureen again. But Janie visited her over a period of several months. ‘I want her to understand what she’s done.’ ‘I want her to know that we were happy together before this happened.’ ‘I want to help her.’ Strong avenging Janie, weak defenceless Maureen. Years later, after Janie was dead, he put an advertisement in The Times. Maureen. At the parting of the ways. Please contact BG. Just to talk of long ago. There was no answer. He had not really expected one. It was an attempt to propitiate her shade. Years later still he saw a terrible news item in the paper. A Mrs. Maureen Jenkins, a widow living by herself in Cricklewood, had been found by neighbours lying dead in her home, suffocated by a dress which she had been unable to pull over her head. There was a picture of a tired stout elderly-looking woman. He could not decide if it was her or not.
    Danby had come to sit on the end of the bed. He pushed the stamps into a pile. ‘I do wish you’d be more careful with those stamps, Bruno. I found a Post Office Mauritius on the floor the other day.’
    ‘Nothing can happen to them.’
    ‘They could fall through chinks in the floor-boards.’
    ‘There are no chinks. The room is too dusty to have chinks. The chinks are full of dust.’
    ‘There’s no point in your seeing Miles, I shouldn’t think.’
    ‘You don’t understand. There are things I can only talk to Miles about.’
    ‘You want to make a life confession?’
    Bruno was silent. He looked down at the stamps, caressing their gay innocent faces. He looked up at Danby’s big healthy handsome face. How odd human faces were. They differed so much in size, apart from anything else. Danby was no fool. ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Well, make it to me. Or better still to Nigel. He’s in touch with the transcendent.’
    ‘Why are you against it?’ said Bruno. He could hear his voice quavering. He had a little touch of the fear which he sometimes had now when he realised his utter helplessness. He was a prisoner in this house for ever. If they wanted to keep him from Miles they could do so. They could fail to give messages. They could fail to post letters. There was the telephone. But they could cut the wire. Of course these thoughts were insane.
    ‘You haven’t really imagined it,’ said Danby. ‘You’d just embarrass each other horribly. You know how you brood as it is. Something unfortunate would be said and you’d just be utterly miserable.’
    ‘I’ve got to talk to him,’ said Bruno. He looked at his poor blotched hands crawling over the stamps. They looked like huge spiders.
    ‘Why this fuss all of a sudden when you’ve managed without him for years? You never even answer his letters.’
    ‘There’s not much–time left.’ Bruno looked involuntarily at his dressing gown.
    ‘Miles might refuse to come,’ said Danby. ‘Then you’d be terribly upset. Have you thought of that?’
    Bruno had not thought of it. ‘I’ve thought of that of course. But I think he’ll come. I must see him. Please , Danby.’
    Danby looked upset. He stood up and went