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at least grateful that she was up to the task. She had kept him company throughout the afternoons as he dozed; her wordless presence comforted him as no words could have done. In the course of those afternoons, the summer then as hot as this one was proving to be, her mind would wander, almost free of associations, as if with Henry she was embarking on the same uncharted territory. Even after his death this habit had proved impossible to lose. So that when she thought of Mario in his silent house in Parsons Green she would also be preparing to spend an afternoon not dissimilar to his. Not for Mario, as she imagined him, the torpor of an afternoon nap; not for her either. She would sit in her drawing room, the doors open onto the terrace, the sun flooding in, and reflect that she was in many ways a fortunate woman. This, however, was somehow only possible in the summer. Inthe winter, darkness seemed to gather almost as soon as she was home after lunch, and then indeed she did have to summon her strengths, exert her will to endure the dead time ahead of her. It puzzled her that she had so few duties, that all duties seemed to have come to an end with Henry’s death, leaving her idle, unoccupied, so unoccupied that others had no inkling of how she spent her days, imagining that she shopped and cooked as enthusiastically as they themselves did, or met friends in town, or went to galleries and concerts, spent evenings at dinner or cocktail parties where such matters were discussed. She no longer did these things, although with Henry she had travelled, had visited the museums of which he was so fond. It was in Munich, in the Haus der Kunst, that he had received the first warning of his malady. Prescient, although he had made light of it, she had got them back to London, and there, only six months later, he died. Goldmark had attended then, treating the matter as gracefully as Henry had; somehow they had carried it off. But she had been left unoccupied, with this habit of sitting idle in the afternoons, for all the world as if it were disloyal to spend the afternoons in any other way.
    At first people had made an effort with her. They had telephoned assiduously, inviting her to their entertainments, but eventually her polite refusals had antagonised them. ‘She’s aged dreadfully,’ they assured each other, as if they themselves were eternally young. Maybe they thought they were; activity is beneficial in this respect. The cousins were the most insistent, and the most disapproving, and though it cost her something to disappoint them, it did so only for a little while. By this time she was immured in her own silence, as old Mario was in his. He was the same age as herself, exhibitingthe same symptoms, outrunners of a possible greater age, yet they never overstepped the mark of their acquaintanceship, their brief daily contact. To do so would have offended them both. It was ordained that she would greet him as she entered, would eat her solitary meal, and would offer a few formal words before she left. Each knew that the other would go home to an empty house. Each knew that dignity was the best, indeed the only defence, not only against the weariness and disappointment of age, but against pity, which strangers—and almost everyone was a stranger now—of their munificence offered so unstinting a portion.
    It pleased Mrs May to think of the dignified old man as she removed her jacket, smoothed her hair, and took up her position in her armchair, facing the open French windows, for her afternoon reverie. On this Monday the weather was still breathtakingly hot. She pitied those at work in the city, although at other times she almost envied them, remembering her own days as a highly efficient secretary, so anxious to be a model employee that she was unaware of how out of date she must appear. Susie Fuller’s insouciance was simply not within her competence. It never had been, she reflected, letting her head rest on the back of her