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much he had been in her mind; indeed, how often she had told herself it was absurd to think of him, he was so aloof.
    “Janey,” he said, softly.
    “Yes.”
    “You are not really a virgin, are you?”
    She said: “No. Until a year ago, I was married.” After a momentary hesitation, she went on: “I was married for five years, in all.”
    “Ah,” he said, and asked softly: “Happily?”
    “Very.”
    “What happened?”
    “He—he wasn’t so happy as I was.”
    “Divorce?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, Janey,” he said, in a tone of dismay. “I’m so sorry. It must have hurt damnably.”
    “It did hurt, very much. I was so lonely and—and so shattered. I hadn’t realised he had fallen out of love, and he didn’t want to hurt me.”
    “The purgatory of married fools,” he remarked gently. “So you were lonely and this job attracted you.”
    “Very much.”
    “Do you still like this job, as a job?”
    She hesitated, yet knew that she must not, for long. When they had been in the grounds he had told her, in whispers, that all the apartments and all the departments, the public rooms, the theatre and the cinema and the clubs, were bugged; nothing could be said without it being fed into a control room so that it could be replayed and studied and examined word by word, not only for the surface meaning but for nuance, too. Whatever they said in the apartment could be heard and taped, and they could not talk confidentially, except of themselves. His last words had been: “They won’t mind lovers clucking.”
    Now she sensed a stiffening of his body, as if the long delay worried him, and she herself knew that she had hesitated too long, as if she was not certain whether she liked The Project. But at last she said: “In many ways.”
    “Ah! Not every way?”
    “No,” she said. “It’s very lonely.”
    “With so many handsome men about? Nonsense!”
    “It is lonely,” she insisted. “Oh, the working conditions are wonderful except for the noise and that doesn’t worry me like it does Paul. And the food’s very good and one can’t complain of The Project being a cultural desert! But—well, it’s still lonely.”
    “Does it have to be?” he asked.
    “I don’t quite understand you,” she said, but in fact she understood very well, and her heart began to gallop again.
    “I mean, will you be so lonely if you and I—” he hesitated, slid off the window ledge, took her hands and drew her close as he went on: “If you and I became lovers.”
    He wanted to make love to her, to become lovers, so that he could escape. That was the one thing she could not say because it would be overheard, and it was the one thing which made her hesitate. She was young and free and lonely, and there was something about him which stirred her as she had not been stirred for a long time. But he would simply be using her; as Bruce had used her even though he had been sleeping with the other woman, planning to leave her whenever it most suited him although he had sworn it was because he had been so worried about causing her hurt.
    Bruce had used her, then, and cast her aside.
    This man wanted to use her, and cast her aside.
    The difference was that he did not deceive her. She realised with a sense of shock that he had not said that he loved her, had not pretended in any way. They would be lovers until such time as he thought he could escape, and then she would be alone again. Would the loneliness be better or worse?
    “Janey,” he said. “I’ve tried to take you by storm, and I know I shouldn’t have. You won’t hold it against me, will you?”
    “Of course not,” she replied, and added with a laugh: “You did take my breath away!”
    “But you soon got it back! Would you like me to go?”
    “Oh, please, not yet. Will you have some coffee?”
    “I would even have a drink!”
    “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, with a helpless little shrug. “I don’t have any.”
    “You don’t drink?”
    “Not on my own.”
    “Good