n't say that to me four years ago."

"Don't," he said sharply.

"I'm sorry."

He was lighting her candle.

"To-morrow," he said, "you will choose the colour of the garden gates
and advise me about the fencing."

"That _will_ be fun."

She shivered.

"Are you cold?"

"One is always cold after India."

He took her to the door of her bedroom.

"Good-night--God bless you," he said.

She put her two hands on his shoulders and, bending forward, she kissed
him lightly. It was a cruel way of showing him that she didn't care any
more.

"What a revengeful woman I am, punishing him after all these years," she
thought.

But he didn't see it like that.

"I think I deserve her trust," he said to himself, and then his
thoughts, let out to graze, returned to the subject of fences.

"Robert," wrote Ariadne, "I am homesick for India."

XIV

TWO TAXI DRIVES

[_To PAUL MORAND_]

I: SUNSHINE

"Margaret, my dear, how delightful."

"Is it?"

"But of course."

"I always wonder," she murmured, "about accidental and sudden meetings.
They are a sort of nervous shock and you always feel that you are
looking for something that you've mislaid and that you don't seem able
to find again until you've parted."

"How depressing you are. Looking for mislaid intimacy, do you mean?"

"I suppose so."

"When I saw you I simply felt--Margaret, thank God!"

"Matthew, you old humbug."

"And for you who specialise in intimacy and the unexpected, it is simply
disgraceful."

"But I don't."

"You used to."

"Yes."

"Are you a reformed character?"

"A reformed experimentalist."

"I don't believe it."

"Matthew, after all I _am_ glad to see you."

"Then let us take a taxi and drive round the Bois."

"Very well."

"You're not reformed at all. If you were, you would say, 'I've got to
try on,' or, 'there are so many things I must do before lunch,' or 'I am
only in Paris for such a short time.'"

"They're all true."

"Of course--that sort of thing is always true. The point is, is it
relevant?"

"Talking of specialists. Do you still specialise in the irrelevant?"

"I have never understood what that word meant when applied to my
activities. I have still kept my sense of proportion, if that is what
you are driving at?"

"And Virginia?"

"Is still Virginia."

"And you love her?"

"Very often."

"Not all the time?"

"Certainly not. How then should I have my opportunities of discovering
that I lov