r boy, who did
not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and
swaggering, with smears under his red eyes.

Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed the course on
which both of them were set.

He did not want her to see. And yet, unknown to himself, he did count on
her instant understanding, on some releasing, quickening word or look
that would give back life to the dead thing in him. But her eyes,
preoccupied and unhappy, avoided him. He could not have appealed to her.
He could not have said, as he had meant to do, "Christine is dead." He
was silenced by the certain knowledge that all real communication between
them had been broken off.

"No. 10 is going to pull through," she said.

They walked slowly down the corridor. He found it difficult to keep his
feet. He wondered vaguely why she should talk of No. 10 when Christine
was dead. He was puzzled---confused.

"It seemed likely," he muttered. "Rogers had got his teeth into her."

"I suppose you think he was a fool to try?"

(What was she talking about? He would have to arrange for the funeral.
And the money. He did not know whether there would be money enough. It
was hideous--to think of a thing like that--to have to go into a shop and
say to some bored shopkeeper: "I want a nice cheap coffin, please." For
Christine--for whom he had never been able to buy so much as a bunch of
flowers.)

"I--I don't know."

"You see, I heard what you said."

(What had he said? He tried to remember. No. 10. Better dead. Yes, of
course that was it. He couldn't go back on that. His mind seemed to
strain and stagger under the challenge like a half-dead horse under the
whip.)

"She didn't hear me, anyway."

"I want to know--was it just--just a sort of pose--or did you mean it?"

"It was true."

"That doesn't seem to me to matter. It was a beastly thing to have
thought--beastlier to have said----"

He stopped short, as though she had struck him across the face. For an
instant he was blind with pain, but afterwards he steadied, grew deadly
cool and clear-headed. There was a constant movement in the corridor and
he turned abruptly, almost with authority, into an empty operating
theatre. Instinctively he had chosen his ground. Here was symbolized
everything that he trusted and believed in--a cool, dispassionate
seeking, the ruthless cutting out of waste. Yet in the half-light the
place surrounded them both with a ghos