myself. I knew what I wanted with a woman, and I could never say I'd got it when I hadn't."
"But have you got it now?"
"Looks as if I might have."
"Then why are you so pale and gloomy?"
"Bellyful of remembering: and perhaps afraid of myself."
She sat in silence. It was growing late.
"And you do think it's important, a man and a woman?" she asked him.
"For me it is. For me it's the core to my life: if I have a right relation with a woman."
"And if you didn't get it?"
"Then I'd have to do without."
Again she pondered, before she asked:
"And do you think you've always been right with women?"
"God, no! I let my wife get to what she was: my fault a good deal. I spoilt her. And I'm very mistrustful. You'll have to expect it. It takes a lot to make me trust anybody, inwardly. So perhaps I'm a fraud too. I mistrust. And tenderness is not to be mistaken."
She looked at him.
"You don't mistrust with your body, when your blood comes up," she said. "You don't mistrust then, do you?"
"No, alas! That's how I've got into all the trouble. And that's why my mind mistrusts so thoroughly."
"Let your mind mistrust. What does it matter!"
The dog sighed with discomfort on the mat. The ash-clogged fire sank.
"We are a couple of battered warriors," said Connie.
"Are you battered too?" he laughed. "And here we are returning to the fray!"
"Yes! I feel really frightened."
"Ay!"
He got up, and put her shoes to dry, and wiped his own and set them near the fire. In the morning he would grease them. He poked the ash of pasteboard as much as possible out of the fire. "Even burnt, it's filthy," he said. Then he brought sticks and put them on the hob for the morning. Then he went out a while with the dog.
When he came back, Connie said:
