Georgie sighed and rolled over with her head in my lap. She was dressed now except for her shoes and stockings. 'When must you go?'

'About five.'

'Don't let me catch you being mean with time.'

Such remarks were as near as I ever got to feeling the sharper edge of her love. I could not have wished for a more tactful mistress.

'Antonia's session ends at five,' I said. 'I should be back at Hereford Square soon after that. She always wants to discuss it. And we have a dinner engagement.' I lifted Georgie's head a little and drew her hair forward, spreading it over her breasts. Rodin would have liked that.

'How is Antonia's analysis going?'

'Fizzingly. She enjoys it disgracefully. Of course, it's all for fun anyhow. She's got a tremendous transference.'

'Palmer Anderson,' said George, naming Antonia's psychoanalyst, who was also a close friend of Antonia and myself. 'Yes, I can imagine becoming addicted to him. He has a clever face. I imagine he's good at his trade.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I dislike what you call his trade. But he's certainly good at something. Perhaps he's just good. He's not simply sweet and polite and gentle as only Americans can be sweet and polite and gentle, though he is that. He has real power in him.'

'You sound rather carried away by him yourself!» said Georgie. She edged into a more comfortable position, her head in the crook of my knee.

'Perhaps I am,' I said. 'Knowing him has made a lot of difference to me.'

'In what way?'

'I can't say exactly. Perhaps he has made me worry less about the rules!'

'The rules!' Georgie laughed. 'Darling, surely you became indifferent to the rules long ago.'