She had no place in either environment, and she was alone in the world. She was, in fact, completely upset, and she fervently wished the thing had never happened. She was resentful towards the man for having upset her like this, and for having made her drink too much.

By the way she had drunk too much, too, and she had better look out. She was late for dinner as well – ten minutes late. Did she dare go in, ten minutes late and having drunk too much?

She washed hurriedly in her dim pink bedroom, and decided she was able to brazen it out. No sooner had she entered the dining-room, and taken her seat at the table, than she decided that she had made a mistake. She said ‘Good evening’ to a floating Mrs. Barratt and Mr. Thwaites, and she heard them say ‘Good evening’ back. She saw that they were well into the middle of the main dish, which was fish, and Sheila at once put some tepid soup in front of her. She stared at her soup as she ate it, and no one spoke. She waited for someone to speak, but still no one did so. Why? What was the matter? Was it because they knew she was drunk, because they were too appalled by her behaviour to speak? When Sheila replaced her soup with the fish, she looked up to see if they were looking at her. They were not. They were looking at nothing and not speaking.

Not a word was uttered throughout the meal. If Mr. Thwaites was not in a talking mood, such a thing was by no means unknown at the Rosamund Tea Rooms at dinner, but nothing could convince her that there was not some graver meaning behind the silence of the dining-room tonight. At last Miss Steele stole from the room with her Life of Katherine Parr. The others followed her one by one. Sheila put some jam tart in front of her and she was left alone, and as it were in disgrace, to eat it.

She went straight up to her room. Then she went to the bathroom and turned on a bath. She began to feel better, and stayed a long while in the hot water.

2

She slept well, but awoke at six, and could not go to sleep again. She reviewed the evening before dispassionately. She saw it in hues less black than those in which it had been steeped last night, but she still thought ill of it, and still had a feeling of having been, in a rather unfair way, upset.

She surprised herself saying to herself, with an air of resignation, that ‘that was the end of that, anyway’, and she asked herself what she meant by this. What was the end of what? Had anything begun, which had now ended?

She sought carefully for a solution to this problem, and found it in his remark that he had ‘spotted her first thing and made up his mind to meet up with her’. Most odd. Well, he would certainly have no further ambition to meet up with her now. Because of her general maladroitness, of her inability to drink, and of the arrival on the scene of those two girls, the whole thing had been bungled and was at an end.

The day was Saturday, and she did not have to go to London. In the morning she did some shopping in the town and succeeded, for the most part, in putting yesterday evening from her mind. She did, however, occasionally wonder what kind of night Lieutenant Pike had had after she had left him, and at what hour and in what place it had ended.

In the afternoon, coming in late to tea in the Lounge, she found Lieutenant Pike seated on the settee and in conversation with Mr. Thwaites.