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you.” Patty’s courage was draining away. “It’s not important. But Ronald told me the most frightful nonsense about you and I wanted to tell you I didn’t believe it.”
    Marjorie opened the door. It was apparent that she had been crying. “Oh, it isn’t true!”
    “I knew it couldn’t be.”
    Marjorie ushered Patty into her room, where she sat on the bed to allow Patty the chair. “Would you like—” Marjorie hesitated. “Well actually I haven’t got anything except some cough sweets my sister sent me, but would you like one of those?”
    “I’d love one,” Patty said politely.
    “The thing is, I have been sleeping in Grace’s room,” Marjorie said, once Patty had the cough sweet in her mouth.
    “Grace!” Patty said.
    “I know. But she has the room next to mine. And I could hear her crying in the night, and I couldn’t just leave her to sob on and on. I went in to her. It turns out that she was blitzed and all her family killed. She was buried in the rubble for a day and a half. She can’t bear to be alone in the dark, it brings it all back. Of course she can’t keep a light on all the time, because they come around and check we’re observing lights out, though she did try for a bit with flashlights except that she couldn’t afford the batteries, and with candles she worried she was going to burn the place down. So I started sleeping in there with her, and she can get to sleep, and when she wakes up in the night I hold her hand. And that’s really all there is to it.”
    “But that’s just … just Christian kindness,” Patty said.
    “It is!” Marjorie said. “I’m so glad you understand. Mr. Collins didn’t believe me. He insinuated the most awful things. And at first I slept on the floor, wrapped in my blankets you know, but in the winter when it was so cold I started to get into bed with her, and I suppose it looks bad, but I shared a bed with my sister at home until I came to Oxford and I didn’t see that it was any different.”
    “Didn’t you say that to Mr. Collins?”
    “He wanted me to repent and be forgiven, but I haven’t done anything wrong! And he wanted me to promise I’d never sleep in there again, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Grace has the most terrible dreams. And he wanted to know why I hadn’t told anybody.”
    “Why hadn’t you? We could have taken turns.”
    Marjorie sighed. “It was because Grace begged me not to, she doesn’t want anyone to know about her dreams and her family. You know what she’s like. It was hard enough for her to tell me.”
    “If she had told the college they might have put her in one of the rooms with two beds so she’d have had somebody there,” Patty said.
    “She was in one of those last year, but you know how they make a thing of the single rooms. Virginia Woolf and all that. I hate to even have to explain to Mr. Collins and you now, but I have to defend myself. Grace must see that.”
    “I think you ought to explain to everyone in the Christian Union. Once they know they’ll understand.” Patty felt sure of it. “They’re good people, they love God, they know you do, they’ll understand you’re doing it in Christian kindness and you need to go on doing it. And they’ll keep quiet about Grace, and it’s better than what they’re thinking about her now!”
    “Could we be sent down, do you know? I mean if people really believed Grace and I were lovers? If we really were?”
    “Of course you couldn’t. Think of the willowy men.”
    “I think it is illegal, though,” Marjorie said, crushing her handkerchief in her fingers.
    “It’s nonsense for it to be illegal,” Patty said briskly. “It may be immoral and unclean because it’s outside marriage, but it shouldn’t be illegal. That’s nonsense.”
    Marjorie began to cry again.
    “Look, come down now. Nobody was there for the Bible tea when I left except Ronald, but they’ll all be there by now. Come down and clear it up, and have some