Arrested in wonder and in pure, perfect attraction, he moved towards her. She sat like a strange queen, almost supernatural in her glowing smiling richness.

‘The point about love,’ he said, his consciousness quickly adjusting itself, ‘is that we hate the word because we have vulgarised it. It ought to be prescribed, tabooed from utterance, for many years, till we get a new, better idea.’

There was a beam of understanding between them.

‘But it always means the same thing,’ she said.

‘Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,’ he cried. ‘Let the old meanings go.’

‘But still it is love,’ she persisted.