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this dream had in a way presented her to him; given her a voice and words to say.
    ‘But she is not even a woman I know,’ was his first thought. He wondered how he could ever make of her a stranger again; for him, their dream-intimacy had overstepped preliminary revelation, hastening them beyond solicitude for one another, even curiosity. If they were to be condemned, as dream-figures, to meet always in a void, he envisaged the uselessness of everseeing her again. Worse than strangers, too impatient to retrace their way, heedless of all small discoveries, lovers’ pleasures, they were committed to one another, by trickery of his unconscious mind.
    When he could thrust aside the heaviness of sleep, he began to be ashamed, and struggled to call the dream a dream. This was difficult. In dreams, he had often before discovered the truth, or invented a condition which later became the truth. In dreams, he had fallen in love, and, waking, found his relationship with someone unexpectedly, perhaps irremediably, changed. He would see them afterwards in a different light, unable to believe that they did not hold the dream in common.
    Today, during which church-bells rang, the sea crashed bleakly upon the rocks and footsteps hurried on the esplanade, he felt unreal and troubled. He needed to convalesce from sleep, as if from a severe illness.
    They spent an edgy day. Isabella over-roasted the meal, was all hurry and confusion with no Mrs Dickens to help her. After tea, Laurence put on his army boots and the sour-smelling battledress, and he and Vinny went off to the station.
    Before he went, while he was lacing up his boots and breathing heavily, Laurence said: ‘I hope, by the way, that this Vinny is not one day going to be a father to me.’
    Isabella said ‘Shush’ and pointed towards the door.
    ‘He’s in the lavatory.’
    ‘Well, I will assure you, you have nothing to worry about. He’s not the marrying kind and neither, any more, am I.’
    When they had gone, she began to wonder why the idea had seemed so objectionable to Laurence. She felt sad and lonely in the empty house, and longed for Thursday to come.

CHAPTER 3
    The first symptoms of life’s regaining normality began for Isabella during Vinny’s stay and, in the days which followed, more and more of her previous existence returned. Evalie Hobson, who had not dared to do more than write one scared letter, now began to call again. She and Isabella had only a superficial acquaintance, but this made it all the more precious to both of them. Talk skimmed along, chocolates were chosen from the box, tea drunk, sherry sipped. Scrawled notes passed between them, handbags were rummaged through for recipes and diet sheets. They met middle-age together – a time when women are necessary to one another – and all the petty but grievous insults of greying hair, crowsfeet, and the loathed encumbrances of unwanted flesh, seemed less sordid when faced and fought (though fought spasmodically and with weak wills) gaily together. They laughed a great deal over their experiments: one week they bent and stretched with such fury that Evalie broke a blood vein in her eye; the next week they drank nothing after luncheon; another time ate only grapes all day long. They counted up calories, bought new corsets and tried new face-creams; cut paragraphs out ofmagazines for one another and went together to the Turkish baths. They remained the same – two rather larkish school-girls. This they realised and it was the piteous part to them of growing old. ‘We haven’t changed enough,’ Isabella once said. ‘We don’t any longer match our looks. We’ve got lost and left behind.’ ‘We ought to take up something,’ Evalie agreed. ‘Not read the books we do. For instance, we never read books written by men, do we? Just library books all the time. You see how American women go to all those lectures when they reach the change of life. It’s only trying to catch up with their looks. We