(He had given them his name and told them he was French, which had further amazed George because of his completely accentless English.) The two newly-weds were presently entertained in a manner to which they were wholly unaccustomed and which they could certainly not have afforded—George smilingly declined to break his temperance pledge, but ate two dozen oysters with gusto while Livia drank champagne and laughed a great deal. After dinner it seemed equally natural that the stranger should drive them back to their hotel in his car and later take them on to the railway station. The train was already drawn up at the platform, so the three of them sat together in an otherwise unoccupied compartment with half an hour to wait. Suddenly George discovered the hotel-room key in his pocket and, excusing himself, walked down the platform to the station office to arrange for its return. He wasn’t away more than ten minutes, and when he got back the three resumed their conversation until the train’s departure.

About a year later (George went on), Livia exclaimed suddenly, during a rather trivial quarrel: “That Frenchman sized you up all right—HE said I oughtn’t ever to have married you!” More startled than angry, George then asked for an explanation. She wouldn’t give any at first, but on being pressed said that during the few minutes he had left her alone in the train with the stranger, the latter had made her an ardent profession of love and had actually implored her to run off with him.

When George reached this point in the story he commented rather na vely: “I suppose that COULD happen, with a Frenchman, even though he’d only set eyes on her a few hours before.”

“Perhaps in that particular way he was unbalanced.”

“No—or at least there wasn’t much other evidence of it. You see, having once got interested in the man, I’d found out a few things about him and followed his career. He’d been married and raised a family long before his meeting with us, and recently he’s become fairly well known as one of the financial experts to the Peace Conference. You’d recognize the name if I told you, but I don’t think that would be quite fair because a few months ago he and his wife came to London on some official mission, and there were photographs of them in the papers looking as if they’d both had a lifetime of happiness.”

“Maybe they had.”

A sudden commotion of door-banging and engine-whistling drowned George’s reply and caused him to repeat, more loudly: “I shouldn’t wonder.”

“There’s one other thing that occurs to me, Boswell, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it—”

“Of course.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THE INCIDENT REALLY HAPPENED?”

The train began to move and George walked with it for a few seconds, hastily pondering before he answered: “Aye… I can see what you mean… Funny—I hadn’t ever thought of THAT. And yet I should have, I know.” His walk accelerated to a scamper; there was now only time to wave and call out: “Goodbye… see you tomorrow… Goodbye…”

When the train had left he stood for a moment as if watching it out of sight, but actually watching nothing, seeing nothing. A porter wheeling a truck along the platform halted and half turned. “‘Night, George.”

“Good night,” responded George mechanically, then pulled himself together and walked down the ramp to the station yard.

* * * * *

He felt he must at all costs avoid the main streets where people would stop him with congratulations on the success of the day’s events. There was a footpath skirting the edge of the town that meant an extra half-mile but led unobtrusively towards the far end of Market Street. Nobody went this way at night except lovers seeking darkness, and darkness alone obscured the ugliness of the scene—a cindery waste land between town and countryside and possessing the amenities of neither; it had long been a dream of his to beautify the whole area with shrubs and lawns, to provide the youth of Browdley with a more fitting background for its romance. But Browdley youth seemed not to care, while those in Browdley who were no longer youthful objected to the cost. Perhaps for the first time in his adult life George now traversed the waste land without reflecting ruefully upon its continued existence; he had far more exacting thoughts to assemble, and in truth he hardly knew where he was. The day that had begun so well was ending in trouble whose magnitude he had only just begun to explore, and with every further step came the deepening of a pain that touched him physically as well as in every other way, so that he felt sick and ill as he stumbled along. He was appalled by the realization that Livia still had such power to hurt him.

Sombrely he reached his house and, as he entered it, suddenly felt ALONE. Which made him think; for he had been just as alone ever since Livia had left six months before; and if he had not felt it so much, that proved how hopefully, in his heart, he had looked upon the separation. She would come back, he must all along have secretly believed; or at least the bare possibility had been enough to encourage his ever-ready optimism about the future. Night after night he had entered his empty house, made himself a cup of tea, spent a last hour with a book or the evening paper, and gone to bed with the tolerable feeling that anything could be endured provided it might not last for ever. There was even a half-ascetic sense in which he had found tolerable his enforced return to bachelorhood, and there was certainly a peace of mind that he knew her return would disturb—yet how welcome that disturbance would be! And how insidiously, behind the logic of his thoughts, he had counted on it!… He was aware of that now, as he entered his house and felt the alone-ness all-enveloping. Heavily he climbed the stairs to his bedroom and began to throw a few necessary articles into a suitcase. Even that he did with an extra pang, for it reminded him of times when Livia had packed for him to attend meetings or conferences in other parts of the country; she was an expert packer as well as very particular about his clothes. And the first thing she did when he returned was to unpack and repair the ravages of his own carelessness about such things. There was that odd streak of practicality in her, running parallel to other streaks; so that she not only loved classical music but could repair the gramophone when something went wrong with it. And the garden that Winslow had admired was further evidence; it had been a dumping-ground for waste paper and old tin cans before she started work on it. Recent months without her attention had given the weeds a chance, but still her hand was in everything, and the roses seemed to have come into special bloom that week as if expecting her return. In a sort of way she had done for that patch of waste land what George himself had tried to do for Browdley as a whole (yet would never have bothered to do for his own back garden); but of course she had done it without any civic sense, and for the simple reason that the place belonged to her. George sighed as he thought of that, recognizing motives that were so strong in her and so absent in him; but with the sigh came a wave of tolerance, as for someone who does simple natural things that are the world’s curse, doubtless, but since they cannot be changed, how pointless it is to try. Yet the world MUST be changed… and so George’s mind ran on, facing an old dilemma as he snapped the locks on his suitcase. All at once the house, without Livia in it, became unbearable to him; he knew he would not sleep that night, and as his train left early in the morning he might as well not even go to bed; he would take a walk, a long walk that would tire him physically as well as clarify some of the problems in his mind.