‘No… no…’ She was surprised at the sound of her own voice. It was just as if she was pushing something away. She went on hurriedly. ‘It’s for my mother. She has fair hair with just a little grey in it – really not much at all.’

The new salesgirl was a good saleswoman. She said she knew just what madam wanted and produced it.

‘It’s really good,’ she said in a pretty, friendly voice. ‘People keep on coming back for more. Now why don’t you try it for yourself? I’m sure you’d be pleased. It’s wonderful how it brings up the lights in the hair. Makes it ever so soft and pretty too.’

It was the girl’s ‘Why?’ that pushed its way in amongst Althea’s ordered thoughts. It hadn’t any business there. It just gate-crashed and stayed – a determined and shameless fifth-columnist. Before she knew what she was going to do she heard herself say, ‘Oh, I don’t know…’ in the kind of tone which is a positive invitation to the enemy to come in.

The girl smiled up at her. She was an engaging little thing with dimples.

‘You’d like it really – I’m sure you would.’

Althea came out of the shop with two bottles of Sungleam, one for fair hair and the other for brown. The girl had also sold her a pot of vanishing-cream, and had tried to persuade her into lipstick and rouge, but she had come to with a jerk and made her escape. Locked away at the back of her mind there were things which must on no account be allowed to push their way out. She was aware of them there, stirring, rising, struggling. Something in the hot scented air of the shop, the whirr of driers in the background, the rows of bottles, the creams and lotions, the vivid scarlet of nail-polish, the whole array of all the frivolous things that minister to beauty, encouraged them to struggle. It was years since she had had her hair done at a shop. It was years since she had stopped using make-up. It was years since she had stopped taking any interest in how she looked.