have been. Her pettiness would have driven him and Joyce blissfully into each other's arms, without the faintest sense of remorse. But this strangely detached Phyllis who seemed to move in a dream, instead of the familiar Phyllis of tempers and reproaches, was a different problem. Even sin, he thought furiously, is to be made as difficult as possible for me. And I had always imagined it would be so easy. Will God ever forgive me if I don't commit the sins I was intended to? God will get no praise from me, He's packed the house with a claque of crickets to put the show over. Through the window Phyllis's golden head shone in a haze of lamplight. As always, when angry at her he loved her most. When you love a woman, why make her life miserable by marrying her? Marriage demands too much. . . .
From this speculation he came back to find Ruth just finishing her sentence, the car still opposite the window, the loaf of bread still lifted in Phyllis's hand. It occurred to him that this evening was damnably like the slowed motion-pictures in which the stream of life is retarded into its component gestures. Now he was to have the embarrassment of witnessing the actual rhythm of living, the sluggish pattern that underlies gay
