As she went back along the corridor she decided that she wouldn’t tell Philip what had happened. She wanted to tell him, but that would have to wait; she couldn’t tell him until things were absolutely dead right between them again, when they would begin once more to share everything, halving thoughts and swapping dreams. Things ought to be like that now, this very minute, she told herself; it would make all the difference here, in this place, where one was so lonely, lost. If she had known this was going to happen—but then of course she hadn’t. She never thought of things like this, and Philip did—it had been one of her complaints, that silly anxiousness of his—and he ought to have made the move. They could have walked into this together then, just a dark night’s adventure. She had had an impulse to say something too, earlier, but you couldn’t break the months of smooth politeness (Did you sleep well? Very well, thanks. Did you?) with a few words shouted in a car during an incessant downpour. And now she couldn’t begin. It would be nothing but humiliating surrender, with Philip pretending elaborately to her that it wasn’t. No, this night at least she must see it through in silence.
She had probably seen the worst of it, though, and everything would ‘now become sensible again instead of getting more and more out of hand, opening pits under your feet. (Though nerves accounted for most of it; and days and nights of rain and Penderel’s company—he loved to make the simplest thing seem sinister and unmanageable, even his stupid jokes were wild, unpleasant—would account for nerves.) The rest would be merely discomfort and the writhing memory of that room. But if there were only another woman there (not that horror), someone of her own kind who would understand a word or a glance, it would be better.
Yes, everything was all right, she told herself as she pushed open the door into the hall. The men were there, looking comfortable enough. And there were signs of supper on the table. Food—even if that woman had a hand in it—would make a difference. She walked across to them, smiling. Would they notice that something had happened to her? Philip might, and he was looking at her, smiling too, though rather vaguely. Now that she saw him again, that room seemed miles away, shrank to a pin-point of terror.
She put down the bag and walked up to Philip. ‘You must have wondered what had become of me,’ she told him.
‘No, they told me you’d gone to change.’ He was surprisingly casual.
‘Didn’t you think I’d been a long time?’ she asked, hoping that he wouldn’t think she was fishing for a compliment as she used to do in the old days.
He shook his head and smiled. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon. You’ve been quicker than usual.’
It was astonishing. She felt as if she had been away for hours, just because she had gone through that adventure, been jammed into all manner of queer horrible lives for a few minutes, while they had smoked a cigarette or two and chatted by the fire. ‘I seem to have been away a long time,’ she replied lamely. It was rather frightening, this difference in the point of view, leaving you so lonely.
‘Good for you, Mrs. Waverton!’ Penderel called out to her from the other side of the fireplace. ‘You make it look like a party. I knew you would. And there’s supper coming, though of course it’s not polite to mention it.’
It was one of his silly remarks, but for once he did not irritate her and she smiled across at him. But, strangely enough, instead of giving her his usual grin in return, he gave her a curiously unsmiling but kind, even sympathetic, glance. It was just as if he knew what had been happening. That, of course, was absurd, but still there was something very strange in his look.