Five years ago, but it came back like yesterday. He said,

“Why did you let me go?”

“How could I keep you?”

“You didn’t try.”

“No-I didn’t try. I didn’t want to keep you if you wanted to go.”

He was silent, because he couldn’t say, “I didn’t want to go.” He had known Elizabeth all his life, and Marjory for three short weeks. At twenty-three it is the new, the unexpected, the unknown, which evokes romance. If the enchanted distance turns upon nearer view into a desert, you have only yourself to thank. Marjory hadn’t changed-he had always had to remind himself of that.

He found himself leaning forward, his hands between his knees, words coming at first jerkily and then with a rush.

“It wasn’t her fault, you know. I was damnable to live with-and the baby died-she hadn’t got anything. Money was tight. She’d been used to having a good time-lots of people to go about with. I couldn’t give her anything to make up for it. The flat was so cramped-she hated it. I was always away, and there wasn’t any money, and when I was there I was in a filthy temper. You can’t blame her.”

“What happened, Carr?”

“I was sent to Germany. I didn’t get demobbed till the end of that year. She never wrote much, and then she didn’t write at all. I got leave, and came home to find strangers in the flat. She’d let it. No one knew where she was. When I got home for good I tried to trace her. I took on the flat again, because I had to live somewhere and I’d got this job in a literary agency. A friend of mine started it-Jack Smithers. You remember, he was up at Oxford with me. He was crocked in the war, and got away with this business before the ugly rush.”

Elizabeth said, “Yes?”