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no idea at all of her unhappiness. He went over to her, put his arms around her, and she stood with her head on his shoulder and wept. For the first time, George thought, they were together. They sat by the fire a long time that night, drinking, smoking and her head was on his knee and he stroked it, and thought that now, at last, she had been admitted into the world of emotion and they would learn to be really together. He could feel his strength stirring along his limbs for her. He was still a man, after all.
    Next day she said she would not go on with the new show. She would tell Jackie he must get another partner. And besides, the new act wasn’t really any good. ‘I’ve had one little act all my life,’ she said, laughing. ‘And sometimes it’s fitted in, and sometimes it hasn’t.’
    ‘What was the new act? What’s it about?’ he asked her.
    She did not look at him. ‘Oh, nothing very much. It was Jackie’s idea, really …’ Then she laughed. ‘It’s quite good really, I suppose …’
    ‘But what is it?’
    ‘Well, you see …’ Again he had the impression she did not want to look at him. ‘It’s a pair of lovers. We make fun … it’s hard to explain, without doing it.’
    ‘You make fun of love?’ he asked.
    ‘Well, you know, all the attitudes … the things people say. It’s a man and a woman – with music of course. All the music you’d expect, played offbeat. We wear the same costume as for the other act. And then we go through all the motions … It’s rather funny, really …’ she trailed off, breathless, seeing George’s face. ‘Well,’ she said, suddenly very savage, ‘if it isn’t all bloody funny, what is it?’ She turned away to take a cigarette.
    ‘Perhaps you’d like to go on with it after all?’ he asked ironically.
    ‘No. I can’t. I really can’t stand it. I can’t stand it any longer, George,’ she said, and from her voice he understood she had nothing to learn from him of pain.
    He suggested they both needed a holiday, so they went to Italy. They travelled from place to place, never stopping anywhere longer than a day, for George knew she was running away from any place around which emotion could gather. At night he made love to her, but she closed her eyes and thought of the other half of the act; and George knew it and did not care. But what he was feeling was too powerful for his old body; he could feel a lifetime’s emotions beating through his limbs, making his brain throb.
    Again they curtailed their holiday, to return to the comfortable old flat in London.
    On the first morning after their return, she said: ‘George, you know you’re getting too old for this sort of thing – it’s not good for you; you look ghastly.’
    ‘But, darling, why? What else am I still alive for?’
    ‘People’ll say I’m killing you,’ she said, with a sharp, half angry, half amused, black glance.
    ‘But, my darling, believe me …’
    He could see them both in the mirror; he, an old pursy man, head lowered in sullen obstinacy; she … but he could not read her face.
    ‘And perhaps I’m getting too old?’ she remarked suddenly.
    For a few days she was gay, mocking, then suddenly tender. She was provocative, teasing him with her eyes; then she would deliberately yawn and say, ‘I’m going to sleep. Good night, George.’
    ‘Well, of course, my darling, if you’re tired.’
    One morning she announced she was going to have a birthday party; it would be her fortieth birthday soon. The way she said it made George feel uneasy.
    On the morning of her birthday she came into his study where he had been sleeping, carrying his breakfast tray. He raised himself on his elbow and gazed at her, appalled. For a moment he had imagined it must be another woman. She had put on a severe navy blue suit, cut like a man’s; heavy black-laced shoes; and she had taken the wisps of black hair back off her face and pinned them into a sort of clumsy knot. She was suddenly a