‘Though Gudrun isn’t so very simple, is she? One doesn’t know her in five minutes, does one? She’s not like me in that.’ She laughed at him with her strange, open, dazzled face.

‘You think she’s not much like you?’ Gerald asked.

She knitted her brows.

‘Oh, in many ways she is. But I never know what she will do when anything new comes.’

‘You don’t?’ said Gerald. He was silent for some moments. Then he moved tentatively. ‘I was going to ask her, in any case, to go away with me at Christmas,’ he said, in a very small, cautious voice.

‘Go away with you? For a time, you mean?’