It was ten o'clock the next morning when John came down. Breakfast was on the sideboard.

Gerda had had her breakfast sent up to her in bed and had been rather perturbed since perhaps she might be "giving trouble."

Nonsense, John had said. People like the Angkatells, who still managed to have butlers and servants, might just as well give them something to do.

He felt very kindly towards Gerda this morning. All that nervous irritation that had so fretted him of late seemed to have died down and disappeared.

Sir Henry and Edward had gone out shooting. Lady Angkatell told him. She herself was busy with a gardening basket and gardening gloves. He stayed talking to her for a while until Gudgeon approached him with a letter on a salver.

"This has just come by hand, sir."

He took it with slightly raised eyebrows.

Veronica!

He strolled into the library, tearing it open.

Please come over this morning. I must see you.

Veronica.

Imperious as ever, he thought! He'd a good mind not to go. Then he thought he might as well and get it over. He'd go at once.

He took the path opposite the library window, passed by the swimming pool which was a kind of nucleus with paths radiating from it in every direction, one up the hill to the woods proper, one from the flower walk above the house, one from the farm and the one that led on to the lane which he took now.

A few yards up the lane was the cottage called Dovecotes.

Veronica was waiting for him. She spoke from the window of the pretentious half-timbered building.

"Come inside, John. It's cold this morning."

There was a fire lit in the sitting room which was furnished in off-white with pale cyclamen cushions.

Looking at her this morning with an appraising eye, he saw the differences there were from the girl he remembered, as he had not been able to see them last night.

Strictly speaking, he thought, she was more beautiful now than then. She understood her beauty better, and she cared for it and enhanced it in every way. Her hair which had been deep golden was now a silvery platinum colour. Her eyebrows were different, giving much more poignancy to her expression.

Hers had never been a mindless beauty.

Veronica, he remembered, had qualified as one of our "intellectual actresses." She had a university degree and had had views on Strindberg and on Shakespeare.

He was struck now with what had been only dimly apparent to him in the past-that she was a woman whose egoism was quite abnormal. Veronica was accustomed to getting her own way and beneath the smooth, beautiful contours of flesh he seemed to sense an ugly iron determination.

"I sent for you," said Veronica as she handed him a box of cigarettes, "because we've got to talk. We've got to make arrangements.

For our future, I mean."

He took a cigarette and lighted it. Then he said quite pleasantly:

"But have we a future?"

She gave him a sharp glance.

"What do you mean, John? Of course we have got a future. We've wasted fifteen years. There's no need to waste any more time."

He sat down.

"I'm sorry, Veronica. But I'm afraid you've got all this taped out wrong. I've-enjoyed meeting you again very much. But your life and mine don't touch anywhere.

They are quite divergent."

"Nonsense, John. I love you and you love me. We've always loved each other. You were incredibly obstinate in the past! But never mind that now. Our lives needn't clash. I don't mean to go back to the States.

When I've finished this picture I'm working on now, I'm going to play a straight part on the London stage. I've got a wonderful play-Elderton's written it for me. It will be a terrific success."

"I'm sure it will," he said politely.

"And you can go on being a doctor." Her voice was kind axnd condescending. "You're quite well knowm, they tell me."

"My dear girl^ I'm married. I've got children."

"I'm married rmyselfat the moment," said | Veronica. "But ^11 these things are easily arranged.

A good lawyer can fix up everything."

She smxied at him dazzlingly. "I always did mean to marry you, darling. I can't think why I have this terrible passion for you, but theire it is!"

"I'm sorry, Veronica, but no good lawyer is going to fix ixp anything. Your life and mine have nothing to do ^ith each other."

"Not after last night?"

"You're not a o:hild, Veronica. You've had a couple of husbands, and by all accounts, several lovers. What does last night mean actually? Nothing at all, and you know it."

"Oh, my dear John-" she was still amused, indulgent. "If you'd seen your face-there in lhat stuffy drawing-room!

You might have 'been in San Miguel again!"

John sighed. He said:

"I was in San Miguel.. Try to understand, Veronica. You came to me out of the Past. Last night I, too, was in the past, but today-today's 4ifferent. I'm a man fifteen years older. A man you don't even know-I and whom, I daresay, you wouldn't like much if you did know."

"You prefer your wife and children to me?"

She was genuinely amazed.

"Odd as it may seem to you, I do."

"Nonsense, John, you love me."

"I'm sorry, Veronica."

She said incredulously:

"You don't love me?"

"It's better to be quite clear about these things. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Veronica, but I don't love you."

She sat so still that she might have been a waxwork. That stillness of hers made him just a little uneasy.

When she spoke it was with such venom that he recoiled.

"Who is she?"

"She? Who do you mean?"

"That woman by the mantelpiece last night?"

Henrietta! he thought. How the devil did she get on to Henrietta? Aloud he said:

"Who are you talking about? Midge Hardcastle?"

"Midge?

That's the square dark girl, isn't it? No, I don't mean her. And I don't mean your wife. I mean that insolent devil who ^ H was leaning against the mantlepiece! It's because of her that you're turning me down!

Oh, don't pretend to be so moral about your wife and children. It's that other woman."

She got up and came towards him.

"Don't you understand, John, that ever since I came back to England, eighteen months ago, I've been thinking about you?

Why do you imagine I took this idiotic place here? Simply because I found out that you often came down for week-ends with the Angkatells!"

"So last night was all planned, Veronica?"

"You belong to me, John. You always have!"

"I don't belong to anyone, Veronica!

Hasn't life taught you even now that you can't own other human beings body and soul? I loved you when I was a young man.

I wanted you to share my life. You wouldn't do it!"

"My life and career were much more important than yours! Anyone can be a doctor!"

He lost his temper a little.

"Are you quite as wonderful as you think you are?"

"You mean that I haven't got to the top of the tree. I shall! / shall!"

John Christow looked at her with a sudden quite dispassionate interest.

"I don't believe, you know, that you will … There's a lack in you, Veronica. You're all grab and snatch-no real generosity-I think that's it…"

Veronica got up. She said in a quiet voice:

"You turned me down fifteen years ago … You've turned me down again today.

I'll make you sorry for this."

John got up and went to the door.

"I'm sorry, Veronica, if I've hurt you.

You're very lovely, my dear, and I once loved you very much. Can't we leave it at that?"

"Good-bye, John. We're not leaving it at that. You'll find that out all right. I think -I think I hate you more than I believed I could hate anyone."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm sorry. Goodbye."

John walked back slowly through the wood. When he got to the swimming pool he sat down on the bench there. He had no regrets for his treatment of Veronica. Veronica, he thought dispassionately, was a nasty bit of work. She always had been a nasty bit of work and the best thing he had ever done was to get clear of her in time -w God alone knew what would have happened to him by now if he hadn't!

As it was, he had that extraordinary sensation of starting a new life, unfettered and unhampered by the past. He must have been extremely difficult to live with for the last year or two. Poor Gerda, he thought, with her unselfishness and her continual anxiety to please him. He would be kinder in future.

And perhaps now he would be able to stop trying to bully Henrietta. Not that one could really bully Henrietta-she wasn't made that way. Storms broke over her and she stood there, meditative, her eyes looking at you from very far away…

He thought, I shall go to Henrietta and tell her-He looked up sharply, disturbed by some small unexpected sound. There had been shots in the woods higher up, and there had been the usual small noises of woodlands, birds, and the faint melancholy dropping of leaves. But this was another noise-a very faint businesslike click…

And suddenly, John was acutely conscious of danger. How long had he been sitting i (here? Half an hour? An hour? There was someone watching him. Someone-And that click was-of course it was-He turned sharply, a man very quick in his reactions. But he was not quick enough.

His eyes widened in surprise, but there was no time for him to make a sound.

The shot rang out and he fell, awkwardly, sprawled out by the edge of the swimming pool…

A dark stain welled up slowly on his left side and trickled slowly onto the concrete of the pool edge and from there dripped red into the blue water…