He had to admit though that on this occasion Paul was much more efficient than he himself was capable of being. Paul saw at once what it had taken Morrison hours, perhaps weeks, to see: that something was wrong with Louise. Leota decoyed her into the kitchen with a glass of milk while Paul conspired single-handedly in the livingroom.

“She’s crazy as a coot. We’ve got to get her to the loony bin. We’ll pretend to go along with her, this circle business, and when we get her downstairs we’ll grab her and stuff her into my car. How long has this been going on?”

Morrison didn’t like the sound of the words “grab” and “stuff.” “She won’t go in cars,” he said.

“Hell,” said Paul, “I’m not walking in this bloody weather. Besides, it’s miles. We’ll use force if necessary.” He thrust a quick beer at each of them, and when he judged they ought to have finished they all went into the kitchen and Paul carefully told Louise that it was time to go.

“Where?” Louise asked. She scanned their faces: she could tell they were up to something. Morrison felt guilt seeping into his eyes and turned his head away.

“To get the baby,” Paul said. “Then we can form the circle.”

Louise looked at him strangely. “What baby? What circle?” she said testing him.

“You know,” Paul said persuasively. After a moment she put down her glass of milk, still almost full, and said she was ready.

At the car she balked. “Not in there,” she said, planting her feet. “I’m not going in there.” When Paul gripped her arm and said, soothingly and menacingly, “Now be a good girl,” she broke away from him and ran down the street, stumbling and sliding. Morrison didn’t have the heart to run after her; already he felt like a traitor. He watched stupidly while Dave and Paul chased after her, catching her at last and half-carrying her back; they held her wriggling and kicking inside her fur coat as though it was a sack. Their breath came out in white spurts.

“Open the back door, Morrison,” Paul said, sergeant-like, giving him a scornful glance as though he was good for nothing else. Morrison obeyed and Louise was thrust in, Dave holding her more or less by the scruff of the neck and Paul picking up her feet. She did not resist as much as Morrison expected. He got in on one side of her; Dave was on the other. Leota, who had waddled down belatedly, had reached the front seat; once they were in motion she turned around and made false, cheering-up noises at Louise.

“Where are they taking me?” Louise whispered to Morrison. “It’s to the hospital, isn’t it?” She was almost hopeful, perhaps she had been depending on them to do this. She snuggled close to Morrison, rubbing her thigh against his; he tried not to move away.

As they reached the outskirts she whispered to him again. “This is silly, Morrison. They’re being silly, aren’t they? When we get to the next stoplight, open the door on your side and we’ll jump out and run away. We’ll go to my place.”

Morrison smiled wanly at her, but he was almost inclined to try it. Although he knew he couldn’t do anything to help her and did not want the responsibility anyway, he also didn’t want his mind burdened with whatever was going to happen to her next. He felt like someone appointed to a firing squad: it was not his choice, it was his duty, no one could blame him.

There was less ice fog now. The day was turning greyer, bluer: they were moving east, away from the sun. The mental clinic was outside the city, reached by a curving, expressionless driveway. The buildings were the same assemblage of disparate once-recent styles as those at the university: the same jarring fragmentation of space, the same dismal failure at modishness. Government institutions, Morrison thought; they were probably done by the same architect.

Louise was calm as they went to the reception entrance. Inside was a glass-fronted cubicle, decorated with rudimentary Christmas bells cut from red and green construction paper. Louise stood quietly, listening with an amused, tolerant smile, while Paul talked with the receptionist; but when a young intern appeared she said, “I must apologize for my friends; they’ve been drinking and they’re trying to play a practical joke on me.”

The intern frowned enquiringly. Paul blustered, relating Louise’s theories of the circle and the poles. She denied everything and told the intern he should call the police; a joke was a joke but this was a misuse of public property.

Paul appealed to Morrison: he was her closest friend. “Well,” Morrison hedged, “she was acting a little strange, but maybe not enough to…” His eyes trailed off to the imitation-modern interior, the corridors leading off into god knew where. Along one of the corridors a listless figure shuffled.

Louise was carrying it off so well, she was so cool, she had the intern almost convinced; but when she saw she was winning she lost her grip. Giving Paul a playful shove on the chest, she said, “We don’t need your kind here. You won’t get into the circle.” She turned to the intern and said gravely, “Now I have to go. My work is very important, you know. I’m preventing the civil war.”

After she had been registered, her few valuables taken from her and locked in the safe (“So they won’t be stolen by the patients,” the receptionist said), her house keys delivered to Morrison at her request, she disappeared down one of the corridors between two interns. She was not crying, nor did she say goodbye to any of them, though she gave Morrison a dignified, freezing nod. “I expect you to bring my notebook to me,” she said with a pronounced English accent. “The black one, I need it. You’ll find it on my desk. And I’ll need some underwear. Leota can bring that.”

Morrison, shamed and remorseful, promised he would visit.

When they got back to the city they dropped Dave Jamie-son off at his place; then the three of them had pizza and cokes together. Paul and Leota were friendlier than usual: they wanted to find out more. They leaned across the table, questioning, avid, prying; they were enjoying it. This, he realized, was for them the kind of entertainment the city could best afford.

Afterwards they all went to Louise’s cellar to gather up for her those shreds of her life she had asked them to allow her. Leota found the underwear (surprisingly frilly, most of it purple and black) after an indecently long search through Louise’s bureau drawers; he and Paul tried to decide which of the black notebooks on her desk she would want. There were eight or nine of them; Paul opened a few and read excerpts at random, though Morrison protested weakly. References to the poles and the circle dated back several months; before he had known her, Morrison thought.

In her notebooks Louise had been working out her private system, in aphorisms and short poems which were thoroughly sane in themselves but which taken together were not; though, Morrison reflected, the only difference is that she’s taken as real what the rest of us pretend is only metaphorical. Between the aphorisms were little sketches like wiring diagrams, quotations from the English poets, and long detailed analyses of her acquaintances at the university.

“Here’s you, Morrison,” Paul said with a relishing chuckle. “ ‘Morrison is not a complete person. He needs to be completed, he refuses to admit his body is part of his mind. He can be in the circle possibly, but only if he will surrender his role as a fragment and show himself willing to merge with the greater whole.’ Boy, she must’ve been nutty for months.”

They were violating her, entering her privacy against her will. “Put that away,” Morrison said, more sharply than he ordinarily dared speak to Paul. “We’ll take the half-empty notebook, that must be the one she meant.”

There were a dozen or so library books scattered around the room, some overdue: geology and history for the most part, and one volume of Blake. Leota volunteered to take them back.