led back in their seats, or prepared to go. It was as though the
fire had been withdrawn from a molten metal which began instantly to
harden. A woman next to Stonehouse tittered.

"So vulgar and silly--I don't know what people see in her."

"I want to get away," Cosgrave said sharply. "It's this beastly
closeness."

He looked and walked as though he had been drinking.

Although the show was not over, the majority of the audience had begun to
stream out. Two men who loitered in the gangway in front of Stonehouse
exchanged laconic comments.

"A live wire, eh, what?"

For some reason or other Stonehouse saw clearly and remembered afterwards
the face of the man who answered. It was bloated and full of a weary,
humorous intelligence.

"Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself!"

5

Cosgrave scarcely answered his companion's comments. He withdrew
suddenly into himself, and after that he shirked the subject,
understandably enough, for if he had had illusions on her account they
must have been effectively shattered. But also he ceased to lie all day
on his bed and stare up at the mosquito-infested river of his nightmare.
He grew restless and shy, as though he were engaged with secret business
of his own of which Stonehouse knew nothing, and of which he could say
nothing. Yet Stonehouse had caught his eyes fixed on him with the
doubtful, rather wistful earnestness of a child trying to make up its
mind to confide. (There was still something pathetically young about
Rufus Cosgrave. Now that his body was growing stronger, youth peered out
of his wan face like a famished prisoner demanding liberty.)

What he did with himself during the long hours when Stonehouse was in his
consulting-room or on his rounds Stonehouse never asked. At night he sat
at the study window of his friend's flat (shabby and high up since all
spare money was diverted to other and better purposes), and looked over
the roofs of the houses opposite, smoking and watching the dull red glow
that rose up from the blazing theatres westwards.

"It is a fire," he said once, "and all the cold, tired people in London
come to warm their hands at it."

Robert Stonehouse went on with his writing under the lamplight.

"Are you cold?"

"Not now." He added unexpectedly: "You think I'd be all right, don't
you, if only you could have a go at my tonsils or my adenoids? I believe
you're just waiting to have a go at them."

"Your tonsils are septic,