Edinburgh. I felt I must come down to you at once, so I went and
got the cycle and started off straight away, and I would have been here
by midnight if I hadn't had a smash at Upminster. No, I wasn't hurt. Not
a scrap. It was at the beginning of that garden suburb. God, it must be
beastly living in those new houses; like beginning to colour a pipe. I'm
glad we live in this old place. Well, a chap who'd bought some timber at
an auction down in Surrey, and was taking it home to Laindon, dropped a
log off his lorry, and I smashed into it and burst a tyre and broke half
a dozen spokes in my front wheel, so I had to hunt round till I found a
garage, and when I did I had to spend hours tinkering the machine up.
The man who owned the place came down in his pyjamas and a dressing-gown
and sat talking about his wife. She hadn't wanted to let him come down
because it was so late. 'Is that a woman who'll help a man in his
business, I ask you?' he kept on saying. Mustn't it be queer to have
womenfolk with whom one doesn't feel identical?" They exchanged a
boastful look of happiness, the intensity of which, however, seemed the
last effort he found possible. For his lids drooped, and he supported
his head on his hand and took a deep drink, and said drowsily, "I'm glad
to be here."

She went and stood beside him and stroked his hair. "I should have come
to you at Aberfay," she grieved. "But I knew I couldn't stand the
winter, and I would only have been a nuisance to you if I had been ill
all the time. Did the woman feed you properly, dear?"

He said, without looking up, "I wouldn't have let you come. It was a
God-forsaken hole. I couldn't have stood it if it hadn't been for"--he
gave it out with an odd hesitancy, almost as if he were boyishly
shy--"Ellen. And I had to stand it, so that I could pull this thing
off."

She asked, "What thing, my dear?" though she was not so very greatly
interested. By daylight her ambition for him was fanatic and without
limit. But in this stolen hour, when no one knew that they were
together, she let herself feel something like levity about his doings.
It seemed enough, considering how glorious he was, that he should merely
be.

He began to eat again and told the story tersely between mouthfuls. "You
know the reason that I stayed up in Edinburgh after I'd sent off Ellen
was that I thought I had to show the directors what I'd been doing at
Aberfay next Thursday. They were to come on to me after they