She heard the steps behind her but did not dare look round, for fear that the last of her courage would desert her if she did so. At times she stopped dead, and the steps behind her stopped dead as well. Once only, as she crossed a lighted street with a few shops in it, and feeling more courageous because of the lighted shop-fronts, she turned about. But the street was empty. Down the last long dark street she broke and ran, slamming the heavy front door of the apartment block behind her at last, panting with relief. Then through the frosted glass she saw the shadow of a man standing, as if in deep thought, on her front porch. It was Lawton. She opened the door once more and they stared at each other for a long moment.
“It was only to see you safely home,” he said in a low voice, apologetically; and now suddenly she was reeling with fatigue, once more overcome by the incoherence and drunkenness of the earlier part of the evening. She fell against him, and he stooped to pick her up. He walked softly, circumspectly up to the first floor with her and, pushing open the door of her flat, walked into it with his burden.
“You are tired,” he said.
He crossed the dark room and laid her down upon the sofa; a street lamp shone with an unearthly glow-worm light through the pane of glass, lighting up her sad and vague expressions.
“I haven’t been fair to you, Hugh,” she said indistinctly and, as if the thought had stung her, she said:
“Come here, oh come here and sit beside me.” And when he obeyed she reached out her arms and put them round him, saying incoherently: “You know how much I think of you, don’t you?” With her lips she searched his, but he evaded her embrace, all the while staring at her with a fixed and melancholy stare.
“Don’t you want me?” she whispered at last, gazing at him, with a bemused and repentant glance. He nodded grimly.
“But not out of gratitude,” he said, and his cold harsh tone cut across her indecision like a knife.
“Gratitude,” she said, genuinely aggrieved.
“Yes, or perhaps boredom,” he said grimly.
“My God, what a prig you are.”
“Perhaps I love you Grete, and I would be mad with happiness if I thought you could love me. But can you? I don’t know. Can’t you see that anything less would be an insult to someone who loves you?”
She groaned and made a little sketch with her hands of someone tearing out her hair in a pantomime of exasperation.
“Why do men complicate everything?” she cried out, suddenly falling back on the cushions with a wail of despair. “Oh why? You are like all the others.”
“Good-night,” said Lawton. He leaned forward and suddenly took her in his arms, hungrily, angrily. He kissed her until she was breathless. It was truly like an act of aggression, as if he were trying to prevent her breathing. And after each bout of kisses he stared at her with his crooked grin. Then, without another word, he smacked her across the face and the white light splintered into a thousand stars.
“Some people can think of nothing but themselves,” he said from the door and she heard his feet run lightly down the stairs. The front door closed behind him with a faint jar, and she heard the distant sound of his hurried footbeats in the silent street.
She rose weeping, and staggered across the room to put on the light. Then she examined her own face in the tall steep glass of the bedroom. Her reflection disgusted her and she turned aside to the kitchen, where she unearthed a glass and a bottle of gin. She poured herself a dose of the spirit and filled up her glass with soda. Then she turned off the lights and took herself back to her dark sofa once more; here she lay, drinking, thinking deeply, and from time to time muttering aloud.
The next day she woke with a heavy sense of gloom and despondency; she was late for the office, and she wore dark glasses to disguise the havoc which sleeplessness and tears had wrought with her complexion. She was overcome with remorse, and at the same time with exasperation, at Lawton’s determination to complicate matters, to make feelings explicit. After an hour of hesitation she walked along to his office to find Carstairs in possession of his desk.
“Hello,” he said gaily, “are you looking for the Major? Didn’t he tell you he was going on leave today? How strange. He didn’t tell me either. He phoned just after breakfast to say he was flying out to Egypt for a week’s leave; by now he must be over the Canal.”
Grete sighed heavily.
“Come. Come,” said Carstairs. “This is no way to take it; besides he spoke words of winged wisdom unto me and said that if I was to invite you to dinner he would not be sorry. Nay, he would be glad knowing you were in such safe hands. Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Dine and dance with three waggish second lieutenants at the King David tonight? Please say yes.”
“Very well,” she said, “though I’m not in the mood.”
“We will cheer you up with our polished banter,” promised Carstairs: “Besides, we all dance well.”
By the time the evening came, she was glad that she had accepted the invitation, for the thought of spending a long solitary evening in her flat was oppressive. Besides, Carstairs’ promise of good company was amply fulfilled. The three young subalterns went out of their way to amuse and divert her — and all three of them danced well. Once, as she was leaving the floor after a dance, her eye caught sight of a familiar figure — or so she thought — standing at the bar and watching her. But before she could verify this first impression, the crowd had closed in on her. She made her way as quickly as possible to the bar but the figure — it had seemed to her to be that of David — had disappeared. She shrugged away the impression and continued to dance until long after midnight. All three of her hosts saw her home in the command car, and she was in a happy and self-confident mood as she closed the door on their smiling faces.
She walked into the dark flat and was instantly aware that there was somebody there, waiting for her in the darkness. She paused, every nerve alert, her finger on the switch. Opposite, on the dark couch by the lighted window, she could see the outline of a figure.
“Who is it?” she said in a low voice. The answer, in David’s deep quiet tone, came back across the silence.
“A friend. Don’t be scared.”
She switched on the light with a click and confronted him.
“Scared?” she said. “What have I to be scared of?” David laughed softly. “Nothing,” he said shortly. “I thought I was being followed, hence my rather theatrical entry. I apologize.”
Grete gazed at him curiously. “So it was you at the Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
David got to his feet and said: “You were not supposed to see me. I was rather clumsy; but I had dinner there before coming on here to…