"Well!" Tietjens said. "Your greatest friends are the Med . . . Med . . . the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about . . . we're at war with them and you haven't gone mad!"
"I don't know," Sylvia said. "Sometimes I think I am going mad!" She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the tablecloth. He muttered: "Med . . . Met . . . Kos . . ." Sylvia said:
"Do you know a poem called Somewhere? It begins: 'Somewhere or other there must surely be . . .'"
Tietjens said:
"I'm sorry. No! I haven't been able to get up my poetry again."
Sylvia said:
"Don't!" She added: "you've got to be at the War Office at 4.15, haven't you? What's the time now?" She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn't want to have to say to him: "Wait a minute, I've something to say to you!" for she might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more.
To keep the conversation going, she said:
"I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful."
Tietjens said: