“Perhaps you meant that I might have asked them to go round touting for a job for me-‘I say, you know, there’s poor old Car-absolutely down and out-had to send in his papers because his father didn’t leave him a sou-took on with Lymington and got let in for the great Lymington smash-’ ”

She stopped me.

“Car-don’t!”

“Well, that’s what they’d have had to say-isn’t it? The Lymington smash takes a bit of living down, my dear. Lymington’s secretary wasn’t exactly in demand. One man told me that if I wasn’t a knave, I must be about the biggest fool in the British Empire, and whichever I was, he hadn’t any use for me.”

She made a sound without any words. I knew I’d hurt her, but I was feeling savage and I wanted to hurt. In a way, it brought her nearer. For three years she’d been as far away as if I’d been dead. It made me feel alive again when she showed that I’d hurt her.

“You see I wasn’t a very marketable article,” I said. “Shorthand nil-typing nil-languages English public school- in fact, commercially speaking, a wash-out. You can’t walk into a man’s office and say, ‘I’m a decent shot, and fair to average at polo and racquets’ ”-I broke off with a laugh-“and that was about the best my best pal could have said for me. I can type now, and I grind out shorthand, but any bright lad from a secondary school has probably got me beat at both.”

“You didn’t give any of us a chance,” she said. “I’m not talking about jobs-I’m talking about being friends. When I’m-” She hesitated, and then said, “down-I want my friends all the more.”

I looked at her for a moment because I couldn’t help it. Then I was afraid to go on looking. There was such a beautiful eager kindness in her eyes, and I thought I saw her lip tremble. That was when I was afraid to go on looking.

“People soon get over wanting you when you’re down in the world,” I said.

“That’s pride,” said Isobel steadily.

I laughed again.