ust of wind could have blown her, rattling, across the terrace. But unmercifully refrained. Then she realized that his eyes were expecting something of her. And she immediately remembered. She hurried down the steps, too quickly for anyone who had been restored suddenly to life-she might have taken a tumble-yet not quick enough for one who recognized that same lovingkindness which might redeem, not only those in whom its lamp stood, but all those who were threatened with darkness. What was oddest, though, the Jew appeared to rediscover something he had known and respected. His expression was so convinced, she was almost compelled to look behind her, in search of some more tangible reason. If she did not, it could have been because she had finally descended. She was standing beside him on the level ground, and the situation seemed to demand that exchange of flatnesses, biscuits rather than oxygen, by which people mostly exist. "Oh," she gasped, and began to crumble words, "I am so sorry. Such an inconvenience. Bringing you, I mean. Like this." "It is no inconvenience," he replied, in the strain that had been established. "It was only fortunate that Bob Tanner caught me so soon after I got off the bus." "Bob Tanner?" "The boy who gave the message." "Oh," she said, thoughtfully, "I did not know there was anyone called Tanner." She sank her chin in. If it had been evening, she might have done something with a fan-if she had had one. But there was only that old flamingo horror of her mother's, so hateful since Mrs Jolley had touched it, and provoked an incident. He was looking at her. He was waiting. But she remembered hearing it was vulgar and inept to bring people straight to the point. So she offered graciously, "I can see the journey has tired you. I insist that you come in. I shall make you rest for a little. You may like to tell me about your work." "It is the same," he said. "Oh, no," she replied, after careful consideration. "Nothing is ever the same." "You have not been engaged in boring a hole in a sheet of steel." "Why must you do just that?" It was time, she suspected, to lead him in. Their heels crunched as they turned on what had once been the gravel drive. Her occupation was making her feel kind and adult. "It is a discipline," he explained, "without which my mind might take its own authority for granted. As it did, in fact, in the days when it was allowed freedom. And grew arrogant. And in that arrogance was guilty of omissions." Miss Hare shivered, as if he had robbed her of her years. "I never could bear discipline. Governesses!" she complained. "It is fortunate I have not got what is called a mind." "You have an instinct." She smiled. She was quite proud. "Is that what it is?" she considered. "I do know a lot. About some things." They had mounted the terrace. "That light, for instance. Those two shiny leaves lying together on the twig. That sort of thing I know and understand. But will it do anybody any good? And your sitting and boring the silly old hole?" "Yes," he answered. "Eventually." They were standing together on the terrace. "It is not yet obvious," he said, "but will be made clear, how we are to use our knowledge, what link we provide in the chain of events." The hour sounded inside the house. The winding of that particular clock had been Mrs Jolley's last attempt to preserve continuity, such as she understood it, at Xanadu. The chiming reminded Miss Hare of her real purpose in sending for the Jew, so she began to wrap her hands in each other. She said, "I am here alone now. Which makes it easier to receive, and discuss. My housekeeper left me, you know, this afternoon. Before that, one never could be certain at what point she might burst into one's thoughts. She had no respect for the privacy of other people's minds. But was always opening, or looking out from behind curtains. Not that she _saw__! I do not think Mrs Jolley sees beyond texture-brick and plastic." Miss Hare had continued to lead her visitor, so that by now they had crossed the threshold, and were actually standing in the house. Out of the corner of her eye, the throbbing beauty of the hall, with its curved staircase and the fragments of a bird's nest, told her of her great courage in attempting to reveal the truth to a second person, even this Jew, after her experience with someone else. Of course the Jew had to look; he was also human. His head was turning on his scraggy neck. His nostrils, she saw, were remarkably fine, in spite of the very pronounced nose. "Extraordinary!" he said. She heard at least that, but did not feel she would attempt to interpret the accompanying smile. "Oh, there is a lot," she said. "I shall show you in time." "But are you not overwhelmed," he asked, "by living here?" "I have always lived here. What is there to overwhelm me?" Fascinated by what he saw, his answer slipped out from behind his usually careful lips. "Its desolation." The heavy word tolled through marble. "You, too!" she cried. "Do you only see what is in front of you?" He threw back his head, it might have been defensively. His laughter sounded quite metallic. "God forbid!" he said. "I could have died of that!" Then he looked at her very closely, following, as it were, in the lines of her face, the thread of his own argument. "It is only that I have grown used to living in a small wooden house, Miss Hare. I chose it purposely. Very fragile and ephemeral. I am a Jew, you see." She did not see why that condition, whatever it was, might not be shared. She felt the spurt of jealousy. She snorted, and began to suck the hot, rubbery lumps of her exasperated lips. "Almost a booth," he continued. "Which the wind may blow down, when one has closed the door for the last time, and moved on to another part of the desert." She hated to contemplate it. "That," she protested, "is morbid." He was looking at her intently, and with the greatest amusement. "It is only realistic to accept what history has proved. And we do not die of it. Even though his limbs may be lopped off from time to time, the Jew cannot die." He persisted in looking at her, as if determined to discover something in hiding behind her face. Could it have been he was sorry for her? When they were sharpening their knives for _him__? When he was the one deserving of pity? Some people, it was true, and more especially those endowed with brilliance, were dazzled by their minds into a state of false security. Unlike animals, for instance. Animals, she well knew, peered out perpetually into what was still to be experienced. So that again she grew agitated. "I must tell you," she almost gasped. In quite a flurry, she had led him into the little sitting-room to which she had retired with her mother the night of the false suicide. Such was her haste on the present occasion, the door would have banged behind them, if it had not decided many years before that it was never again intended to close. It was too stiff. Like the kind of hard _causeuse__ on which she seated herself with her guest, and of which the hospitality had remained strictly theoretical even in the palmy days. There they were, though. After she had looked round, Miss Hare managed, painfully, "I am afraid for you." And did the most extraordinary thing. She took the Jew's hand in her freckled, trembling ones. What she intended to do with it was not apparent to either of them, for they were imprisoned in an attitude. She sat holding the hand as if it had been some thing of value found in the bush: a polished stone, of curious veins, or one of the hooded ground-orchids, or knot of wood, which time, weather, and disease, it was suggested, had related to human disasters. Only the most exquisite sensation destroyed the detached devotion which Miss Hare would normally have experienced on being confronted with such rare matter. "Anybody's life is threatened with a certain amount of hazard," the few answered seriously, after he had recovered with an effort from hilarious surprise, and a thought so obscene he was humiliated for the capacity of his own mind. Miss Hare sat making those little noises of protest reminiscent of frogs and leather. "Clever people," she was saying, "are the victims of words." She herself could have dwindled into a marvellous silence, her body slipping from her, or elongated into such shapes of love and music as she had only noticed long ago in dancers, swaying and looking, no more governed by precept or reason, but by some other lesson which the flesh might at any moment remember, at the touch of peacock feathers. Miss Hare had to glance at her companion to see whether he could be aware that her limbs were, in fact, so long and lovely, and her conical white breasts not so cold as they had been taught to behave unless offered the excuse of music. But the Jew had set himself to observe the strange situation in which his hand had become involved. And at the same time he was saying, "I agree that intellect can be a serious handicap. There are moments when I like to imagine I have overcome it." Then, as the wrinkles gathered at the corners of his mouth: "It is most salutary that you and the drill at which I spend my working life should disillusion me from time to time." He accused with a kindliness, even sweetness, which made her almost throw away the hand. Her evanescent beauty was lit with the little mirrors of fury, before it was destroyed. Which it was, of course. Her condition could not have been less obvious than the sad rags of old cobwebs hanging from a cornice. "Oh," she cried, her mouth full of tears and pebbles, "I am not interested in you! Not what you are, think, feel. I am only concerned for your safety. I am responsible for you!" she gasped. In her anxiety, her tormented skin began to chafe the hand. Whether she had suspected a moment before, probably for the first and only time, what it was to be a woman, her passion was more serious, touching, urgent now that she had been reduced to the status of a troubled human being. Although they continued to sit apart on the terribly formal furniture, it was this latest metamorphosis which brought the two closest together. Himmelfarb stirred inside the aggressive, and in no way personal boiler-suit. After clearing his throat, he asked, "Is there any concrete evidence of danger?" If he played for time, and ignored the last dictates of repulsion which might advise him to withdraw his hand, he could perhaps persuade her into telling him the most secret hiding places. "Concrete? You should know that real danger never begins by being concrete!" Yes, indeed. He could not deny that. When she had recovered from the spasm of exasperation which caused her to jerk, almost to twist the unbelievably passive hand, she began a long, dry, but important, because undoubtedly rehearsed, passage of recitative: "I was going to make a proposal. No. What am I saying? Offer a proposition? It has occurred to me on and off, only there were always too many obstacles. And even now it could sound silly. I mean, it might appear distasteful. But it is what Peg-the old servant-would have called practical. (If only Peg were here, it would be so much easier for all of us.) To cut matters short-because that is necessary since certain things have happened-I want to suggest that you should come here, well, to live." Purposely, she did not look at him, because she would not have cared to witness surprise. "I would hide you," she continued, with blunt tongue. "There are so many rooms, there would be no necessity to stay very long in any one. Which would add to the chances of your safety." She could feel, through his stillness, that he did accept her motives, while remaining critical of her plan. "It would be wrong of you to hide me," he answered, but gently. "Because I can honestly say I have nothing to hide." "They will not ask themselves that," she said. "Men usually decide to destroy for very feeble reasons. Oh, I know from experience! It can be the weather, or boredom after lunch. They will torture almost to death someone who has seen into them. Even their own dogs." "When the time comes for my destruction," he replied quite calmly and evenly, "it will not be decided by men." "That makes it more frightening!" she cried. And burst suddenly into tears. She was at her ugliest, wet and matted, but any disgust which Himmelfarb might have felt was swallowed up in the conviction that, despite the differences of geography and race, they were, and always had been, engaged on a similar mission. Approaching from opposite directions, it was the same darkness and the same marsh which threatened to engulf their movements, but however lumbering and impeded those movements might be, the precious parcel of secrets carried by each must only be given at the end into certain hands. Although the Jew blundered on towards the frontier through the mist of experience, he emerged at one point, and found himself on the hard _causeuse__ in the little sitting-room at Xanadu. There he roused himself, and touched his fellow traveller, and said, "I am going now. I would like to persuade you that the simple acts we have learnt to perform daily are the best protection against evil." "They are very consoling," she admitted. But sighed. The lovely, tarnished light of evening lay upon the floors. In that light, with each object most emphatically intact for the last moments of the day, Himmelfarb could have forgotten he had ever been forced to interrupt those simple daily acts which he now advocated as a shield. Miss Hare followed him across the hall. "At least I must warn you," she said, "when you go from here, that my former housekeeper, Mrs Jolley, suffers from certain delusions. I do not think she is an active agent. But is under the influence of a Mrs Flack, whom I have never met, only suspect. It could be that Mrs Flack also is innocent. But the most devilish ideas will enter the heads of some women as they sit together in a house at dusk and listen to their stomachs rumble. Well, Mrs Jolley is at present staying with Mrs Flack." "And where do these ladies live?" "Oh, in some street. That is unimportant. I think you mentioned, Mr…" (she was no longer ashamed of her inability to manage a name) "… that we were links in some chain. I am convinced myself that there are two chains. Matched against each other. If Mrs Jolley and Mrs Flack were the only two links in theirs, then, of course, we should have nothing to fear. _But__." She was leading him slowly through the house, which the crimson and gold of evening had dyed with a Renaissance splendour. The marble of a torso and crystal of a chandelier shivered for their own beauty. "Is this the way?" he asked. "I am taking you out through the back," she said. "It is shorter." On the kitchen table a knife lay, it, too, a sliver of light. "I would kill for you, you know," Miss Hare suddenly said. "If it would preserve for us what is right." "Then it would no longer be right." Himmelfarb smiled. He took the knife which she had picked up from the table, and dropped it back into its pool of light. "Its purpose is to cut bread," he said. "An unemotional, though noble one." So that she was quenched, and went munching silence on the last stage to the back door. On the step she stood giving him final directions. The rather dead, soapy face of the man who had come towards her up the hill had been touched into life, by last light, or the mysteries of human intercourse. "You always have to leave me about this time," she meditated, as she stood looking down on him from her step. "There is something secret that you do," she complained, "in your own house. But I am not jealous." "There is nothing secret," he replied. "It is the time of evening when I go to say my prayers." "Oh, _prayers__!" she mumbled. Then: "I have never said any. Except when I was not my own mistress. When I was very young." "But you have expressed them in other ways." She shook that off rather irritably, and might have been preparing something rude, if another thought had not risen to trouble the surface. "Oh, dear, what will save us?" she wondered. Before he could answer, she exclaimed, "Look!" And was shading her eyes from the dazzle of gold. "It was at this time of evening," her mouth gasped, and worked at words, "that I would sometimes feel afraid of the consequences. I would fall down in a fit while the wheels were still approaching. It was too much for anyone so weak. And lie sometimes for hours. I think I could not bear to look at it." "There is no reason why you should not look now." Him-melfarb made an effort. "It is an unusually fine sunset." "Yes," she said. And laughed somewhat privately. "And the grey furrows," she observed, "where the wheels have sunk in. And the little soft