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him again until it was almost time for her to go home. He emerged as she was dragging her Gladstone bag down the stairs.
    “There you are,” he said, smiling at her; he was his old self. Evidently, his moods lifted as suddenly and inexplicably as they arrived.
    “Yes, here I am.” She set down her bag and straightened up.
    “Are you leaving us so soon?”
    “I’m afraid I must.”
    “Come and talk to me before you go.”
    “I can’t. I’ll be late for my train.”
    “Just for a few minutes.”
    There was no refusing him. He led her into his study, a high-ceilinged room with book-lined walls. The French doors leading to the garden were wide open, and a fresh breeze from the sea sauntered in, stirring the curtains and the heap of papers on his desk. The room looked across the bay to the distant French coast, and everything blazed in the light he cast.
    “Well, what have you been doing with yourself?” he asked.
    “Jane and I went for a stroll along the beach. It was a chance to catch up with what’s happened since we last saw each other. Actually, when I’m with her, it feels like no time has passed since we were schoolgirls walking to Miss Sandell’s Academy together, along the Upper Richmond Road. We used to chatter about everything under the sun…”
    “Oh, I wish I could have heard you,” he said, wistfully. “I’d have been fascinated by the to and fro of your budding minds. Tell me more about being at school with Jane.”
    “Well, we often wondered what we were going to do with our lives.”
    “What did you envisage for yourselves?”
    “I thought I might become a musician or an actress. Jane was going to take a degree in mathematics. I was rather in awe of her scientific cleverness and confidence; she seemed destined for a brilliant future. Though it seems neither of us ended up exactly where we imagined…” She broke off, mortified by her tactlessness in implying that Jane hadn’t fulfilled her potential.
    But Bertie didn’t appear offended. “I’m glad she had you for company,” he said. “Sometimes, I worry she finds it lonely when I’m shut away writing for hours on end.”
    There was a pause. He was sitting close enough that she could see he had different colored irises: one pure blue, the other with a small patch of grey that dispersed into minute flecks around the edges and merged with the surrounding blue.
    “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    “Yes, when I should have been working. It was most inconvenient.”
    There was an extraordinarily focused gleam in his eyes as they met hers again. She felt an answering pulse deep within her belly, electric in its intensity. “What … what were you thinking?”
    “That you’re not like other women.”
    “Really? In what way?”
    “There’s nothing catty about you; not a single drop of poison or pretense. One feels that at once. I also like it that you’re not afraid to speak your mind, and you have a mind worth listening to.”
    He was the only person, apart from her family, who saw her difference as a positive attribute, a mark of character. It made everything seem better.
    “I feel sure you’d never disappoint a chap,” he went on. “You aren’t like those women who appear intriguing when you first meet them, but grow tiresome once you get to know them. It’s no end of a letdown.”
    She opened her mouth to reply. Presently, he would find out she was something of a misfit, and not as interesting as he believed. Before she had a chance to form the words, she heard Jane’s voice: “Dora! Dora, where are you?”
    Dorothy looked at Bertie. Something passed between them; that crackle of electricity again. She shivered.
    Jane was getting closer. “It’s late! You’re going to miss your train.”
    She appeared at the door. She seemed faintly agitated; her cheeks were flushed and she was a little out of breath, as though she had been running. “There you are!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking