She laughed, out loud this time. How furious Antony would be if anyone called him sentimental.

“What are you laughing at?”

Julia said, “Us.”

“Why?”

“You might have been away two minutes instead of two years.”

“Because I told you about the ink? A nice homely touch, I thought.”

She nodded. When she wasn’t in a rage with him, or breaking her heart, there was that quick give-and-take between them which uses words but hardly needs them. Just now she wasn’t angry and her heart was behaving itself. She felt young and happy, as if not two years but a dozen had been rolled away, and Antony home for the holidays, coming up to schoolroom tea. You washed your face and hands and combed your hair, and as long as Miss Smithers was there you were on your best behaviour, but as soon as tea was over and they could escape to the garden-

They sat side by side on the divan, Antony in a beautiful new suit which must have cost the earth, and Julia, who wasn’t a little girl any more but a struggling novelist, in an old red smock as inky as her nose had been.

Antony was saying, “Well now, what about everything- and everyone?”

“You haven’t seen Jimmy?”

“No. I rang him up. I shall be going down to Latter End in a day or two. I wondered if you would be there.”

Her black brows drew together.

“I may have to go down. I don’t want to. Look here, what has Lois been telling you?” She reached sideways, rummaged behind a cushion, and produced a packet of cigarettes. “Here-have one.”

“Thanks, I’ll smoke my own.”

“Not good enough for you?”

“You’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Control the temper, darling, and have one of mine.”

If she had been going to be angry, it passed. She laughed instead. It was his old game of fishing for a rise. Just at the moment she didn’t even want to.