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them, noted that there was a tear-mark on her cheek. She had made up her face without due care and attention because she had no one to make it up for, except him, and he didn’t count.
    She sat without speaking. First she talks my head off, thought Leadbitter resentfully, and then she hasn’t a word to say to me. Well, two can play at that game. If she doesn’t like it she knows what to do: so why worry? And he wrapped himself in a silence that stiffened his profile and could be felt through the car: a silence so loud and so insistent that it awoke Lady Franklin from her painful reverie. Glancing at Leadbitter guiltily she said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have the wireless on now?’ An imp of perversity entered into Leadbitter and he said with perfect politeness: ‘By all means, my lady, but I rather thought -‘ and his hand, stretched out to the switch, stopped short of turning it. The irresponsive absorption of the wireless in its own concerns was no help to Lady Franklin, inextricably absorbed in hers. Feeling too much about one thing often means feeling too little about another. Outside the tender area of its activity a neurosis sometimes breeds a certain callousness: an inflamed conscience is not sensitive all over. ‘What matter if he is bored?’ Lady Franklin thought, ‘I’m paying him.’ But her thoughts were bolder than her words. She couldn’t tell him that she was talking to him, at somebody’s suggestion, to cure herself of an obsession; but one must apologize to people for boring them. Aloud she said:
    If you don’t mind me talking -‘
    ‘Oh no, my lady,’
    ‘Well, then,’
    But what should she talk about? She could not tell him her story again: even at the confessional, she supposed, you did not confess the same sin twice, however heavy its burden of guilt and grief. Even the patience of a priest must have its limits. Suddenly she remembered what her friend had said: Make other people tell you their stories. They will, fast enough. Make them seem real to themselves, and then they’ll seem real to you. Don’t forget - what you need is, the sense of other people’s reality. You mustn’t go on living in your dream.
    He’s like the moon, she thought inconsequently. I only see one side of his face. And is there any life on it? Like the moon, with its shadows. The moon in its first quarter. … And yet not a moon face: anything but. Sensitive to looks she registered, without feeling it, the blend of strength and delicacy in Leadbitter’s. For the first time she found herself wondering about him.
    ‘Are you married?’ she asked diffidently.
    What did she want him to say? Yes or no? It was anybody’s guess. And Leadbitter tried to feel in his broad palm, curved upon the wheel, the size of the tip that might reward each answer. Women didn’t tip much anyhow, but it might make the difference between a half-crown and a florin. Most women would rather think he wasn’t married, but not, he suspected, Lady Franklin, who was dotty about marriage. Lying, he spoke more quickly than when he told the truth, and his reply came pat: but he hadn’t been able to rid his voice of the moment’s uncertainty as he said:
    ‘Yes, I’m married,’
    ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ said Lady Franklin with a smile.
    Blast her, she was sharper than he thought. How like a woman, to ask a question she had no right to ask, and then not believe him! Oddly enough he was touchier about having his word doubted when he told a lie than when he spoke the truth.
    ‘Yes, well and truly married,’ he said dryly, ‘and three children too,’
    ‘But you said not long ago you didn’t mind the thought of dying!’ Lady Franklin exclaimed.
    ‘Well, Madam,’ he answered reasonably, ‘I’m not the first married man with three children to say that,’ The ‘Madam’ was a slip but he didn’t regret it: she was a madam, and no mistake.
    I’m not married, thought Lady Franklin, inconsequently. Not now, I used to be. But