them without perceiving them. And she felt him following her, dogging her heels like a doom. She held away from him, and yet she knew he drew always a little nearer, a little nearer.

‘I say,’ he said to her one evening, in an odd, unthinking, uncertain way, ‘won’t you stay to dinner tonight? I wish you would.’

She started slightly. He spoke to her like a man making a request of another man.

‘They’ll be expecting me at home,’ she said.

‘Oh, they won’t mind, will they?’ he said. ‘I should be awfully glad if you’d stay.’

Her long silence gave consent at last.

‘I’ll tell Thomas, shall I?’