accidents-like a picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human relationships? Why take them seriously-male or female? Why form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking all for what it was worth?

And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious living.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘what I bought.’ The car was running along a broad white road, between autumn trees.

He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it and opened it.

‘How lovely,’ she cried.

She examined the gift.

‘How perfectly lovely!’ she cried again. ‘But why do you give them me?’ She put the question offensively.