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talked,’ said Ingpen, ‘about love and suffering; and we agreed that life is a delusion, and we agreed, all the same, that we preferred it to Nirvana. And you said then—do you remember?—that perhaps our preference had a meaning.’ He closed the curtains and turned to her and leant back against the window-frame, folding his arms. ‘I often think of it.’

‘Yes. I remember. I think I remember our talk;—though not clearly.’ She rested her forehead on her hand, trying to remember; not only for him but for herself. There was something that they must try to see together. ‘I don’t think that we meant quite the same sort of love, did we? Or the same sort of suffering.’

‘Yes, we did. Exactly the same sort. There is only one sort of both; and of happiness. You said we kept the love we gave; you tried to make it safer so; and I said that that sort was as much of a delusion as the other. I said there was no safety anywhere—for saint or sinner;—granting if you like, that you are the one and I am the other.’

‘You must not get angry with me if we are to think together’ Monica gently smiled in the shadow of her hand. ‘You know I don’t grant it, though you seem to have gone more astray than I