not ask her why she would not go in then. He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away, piqued for the first time.

‘Why wouldn’t you bathe?’ he asked her again, later, when he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman.

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his persistence.

‘Because I didn’t like the crowd,’ she replied.

He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his consciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively,