blame you. But then you’ve nothing to do with me.

In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the car, and they sat there, in the middle of the country lane, to have it out. It was a crisis of war between them, so they did not see the ridiculousness of their situation.

‘If you weren’t a fool, if only you weren’t a fool,’ he cried in bitter despair, ‘you’d see that one could be decent, even when one has been wrong. I WAS wrong to go on all those years with Hermione — it was a deathly process. But after all, one can have a little human decency. But no, you would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of Hermione’s name.’

‘I jealous! I — jealous! You ARE mistaken if you think that. I’m