A very cold winter’s night, so silent that the air seemed frozen, and, since there was no moon, congealed to the stillness of glass spread over England. Ponds and ditches were frozen; the puddles made glazed eyes in the roads, and on the pavement the frost had raised slippery knobs. Darkness pressed on the windows; towns had merged themselves in open country. No light shone, save when a searchlight rayed round the sky, and stopped, here and there, as if to ponder some fleecy patch.

“If that is the river,” said Eleanor, pausing in the dark street outside the station, “Westminster must be there.” The omnibus in which she had come, with its silent passengers looking cadaverous in the blue light, had already vanished. She turned.

She was dining with Renny and Maggie, who lived in one of the obscure little streets under the shadow of the Abbey. She walked on. The further side of the street was almost invisible. The lamps were shrouded in blue. She flashed her torch onto a name on a street corner. Again she flashed her torch. Here it lit up a brick wall; there a dark green tuft of ivy. At last the number thirty, the number she was looking for, shone out. She knocked and rang at the same moment, for the darkness seemed to muffle sound as well as sight. Silence weighed on her as she stood there waiting. Then the door opened and a man’s voice said, “Come in!”

He shut the door behind him, quickly, as if to shut out the light. It looked strange after the streets — the perambulator in the hall; the umbrellas in the stand; the carpet, the pictures: they all seemed intensified.

“Come in!” said Renny again, and led her into the sitting-room ablaze with light. Another man was standing in the room, and she was surprised because she had expected to find them alone. But the man was somebody whom she did not know.

For a moment they stared at each other; then Renny said, “You know Nicholas . . . ” but he did not speak the surname distinctly, and it was so long that she could not catch it. A foreign name, she thought. A foreigner. He was clearly not English. He shook hands with a bow like a foreigner, and he went on talking, as if he were in the middle of a sentence that he wished to finish . . . “we are talking about Napoleon —” he said, turning to her.

“I see,” she said. But she had no notion what he was saying. They were in the middle of an argument, she supposed. But it came to an end without her understanding a word of it, except that it had to do with Napoleon. She took off her coat and laid it down. They stopped talking.

“I will go and tell Maggie,” said Renny. He left them abruptly.

“You were talking about Napoleon?” Eleanor said. She looked at the man whose surname she had not heard. He was very dark; he had a rounded head and dark eyes. Did she like him or not? She did not know.

I’ve interrupted them, she felt, and I’ve nothing whatever to say. She felt dazed and cold. She spread her hands over the fire. It was a real fire; wood blocks were blazing; the flame ran along the streaks of shiny tar. A little trickle of feeble gas was all that was left her at home.

“Napoleon,” she said, warming her hands. She spoke without any meaning.

“We were considering the psychology of great men,” he said, “by the light of modern science,” he added with a little laugh. She wished the argument had been more within her reach.

“That’s very interesting,” she said shyly.

“Yes — if we knew anything about it,” he said.

“If we knew anything about it . . . ” she repeated. There was a pause. She felt numb all over — not only her hands, but her brain.

“The psychology of great men —” she said, for she did not wish him to think her a fool, “ . . . was that what you were discussing?”

“We were saying —” He paused. She guessed that he found it difficult to sum up their argument — they had evidently been talking for some time, judging by the newspapers lying about and the cigarette-ends on the table.

“I was saying,” he went on, “I was saying we do not know ourselves, ordinary people; and if we do not know ourselves, how then can we make religions, laws, that —” he used his hands as people do who find language obdurate, “that —”

“That fit — that fit,” she said, supplying him with a word that was shorter, she felt sure, than the dictionary word that foreigners always used.

“— that fit, that fit,” he said, taking the word and repeating it as if he were grateful for her help.

“ . . . that fit,” she repeated. She had no idea what they were talking about. Then suddenly, as she bent to warm her hands over the fire words floated together in her mind and made one intelligible sentence. It seemed to her that what he had said was, “We cannot make laws and religions that fit because we do not know ourselves.”

“How odd that you should say that!” she said, smiling at him, “because I’ve so often thought it myself!”

“Why is that odd?” he said. “We all think the same things; only we do not say them.”

“Coming along in the omnibus tonight,” she began, “I was thinking about this war — I don’t feel this, but other people do . . . ” She stopped. He looked puzzled; probably she had misunderstood what he had said; she had not made her own meaning plain.

“I mean,” she began again, “I was thinking as I came along in the bus —”

But here Renny came in.

He was carrying a tray with bottles and glasses.

“It is a great thing,” said Nicholas, “being the son of a wine merchant.”

It sounded like a quotation from the French grammar.

The son of the wine merchant, Eleanor repeated to herself, looking at his red cheeks, dark eyes and large nose. The other man must be Russian, she thought. Russian, Polish, Jewish? — she had no idea what he was, who he was.

She drank; the wine seemed to caress a knob in her spine. Here Maggie came in.

“Good evening,” she said, disregarding the foreigner’s bow as if she knew him too well to greet him.

“Papers,” she protested, looking at the litter on the floor, “papers, papers.” The floor was strewn with papers.

“We dine in the basement,” she continued, turning to Eleanor, “because we’ve no servants.” She led the way down the steep little stairs.

“But Magdalena,” said Nicholas, as they stood in the little low- ceilinged room in which dinner was laid, “Sara said, ‘We shall meet tomorrow night at Maggie’s . . . ’ She is not here.”

He stood; the others had sat down.

“She will come in time,” said Maggie.

“I shall ring her up,” said Nicholas. He left the room.

“Isn’t it much nicer,” said Eleanor, taking her plate, “not having servants . . . ”

“We have a woman to do the washing-up,” said Maggie.

“And we are extremely dirty,” said Renny.

He took up a fork and examined it between the prongs.

“No, this fork, as it happens, is clean,” he said, and put it down again.

Nicholas came back into the room. He looked perturbed. “She is not there,” he said to Maggie. “I rang her up, but I could get no answer.”

“Probably she’s coming,” said Maggie. “Or she may have forgotten. . . . ”

She handed him his soup. But he sat looking at his plate without moving. Wrinkles had come on his forehead; he made no attempt to hide his anxiety. He was without self-consciousness. “There!” he suddenly exclaimed, interrupting them as they talked. “She is coming!” he added. He put down his spoon and waited. Someone was coming slowly down the steep stairs.

The door opened and Sara came in. She looked pinched with the cold. Her cheeks were white here and red there, and she blinked as if she were still dazed from her walk through the blue-shrouded streets. She gave her hand to Nicholas and he kissed it. But she wore no engagement ring, Eleanor observed.

“Yes, we are dirty,” said Maggie, looking at her; she was in her day clothes. “In rags,” she added, for a loop of gold thread hung down from her own sleeve as she helped the soup.

“I was thinking how beautiful . . . ” said Eleanor, for her eyes had been resting on the silver dress with gold threads in it. “Where did you get it?”

“In Constantinople, from a Turk,” said Maggie.

“A turbaned and fantastic Turk,” Sara murmured, stroking the sleeve as she took her plate. She still seemed dazed.

“And the plates,” said Eleanor, looking at the purple birds on her plate, “Don’t I remember them?” she asked.

“In the cabinet in the drawing-room at home,” said Maggie. “But it seemed silly — keeping them in a cabinet.”

“We break one every week,” said Renny.

“They’ll last the war,” said Maggie.

Eleanor observed a curious mask-like expression come down over Renny’s face as she said “the war.” Like all the French, she thought, he cares passionately for his country. But contradictorily, she felt, looking at him. He was silent. His silence oppressed her. There was something formidable about his silence.

“And why were you so late?” said Nicholas, turning to Sara. He spoke gently, reproachfully, rather as if she were a child. He poured her out a glass of wine.

Take care, Eleanor felt inclined to say to her; the wine goes to one’s head. She had not drunk wine for months. She was feeling already a little blurred; a little light-headed. It was the light after the dark; talk after silence; the war, perhaps, removing barriers.

But Sara drank. Then she burst out:

“Because of that damned fool.”

“Damned fool?” said Maggie. “Which?”

“Eleanor’s nephew,” said Sara. “North. Eleanor’s nephew, North.” She held her glass towards Eleanor, as if she were addressing her. “North . . . ” Then she smiled. “There I was, sitting alone. The bell rang. ‘That’s the wash,’ I said. Footsteps came up the stairs. There was North — North,” she raised her hand to her head as if in salute, “cutting a figure like this —‘What the devil’s that for?’ I asked. ‘I leave for the Front tonight,’ he said, clicking his heels together. ‘I’m a lieutenant in —’ whatever it was — Royal Regiment of Rat-catchers or something. . . . And he hung his cap on the bust of our grandfather. And I poured out tea. ‘How many lumps of sugar does a lieutenant in the Royal Rat- catchers require?’ I asked. ‘One. Two. Three. Four. . . . ’”

She dropped pellets of bread on to the table. As each fell, it seemed to emphasise her bitterness. She looked older, more worn; though she laughed, she was bitter.

“Who is North?” Nicholas asked. He pronounced the word “North” as if it were a point on the compass.

“My nephew. My brother Morris’s son,” Eleanor explained.

“There he sat,” Sara resumed, “in his mud-coloured uniform, with his switch between his legs, and his ears sticking out on either side of his pink, foolish face, and whatever I said, ‘Good,’ he said, ‘Good,’ ‘Good,’ until I took up the poker and tongs”— she took up her knife and fork —“and played ‘God save the King, Happy and Glorious, Long to reign over us —’” She held her knife and fork as if they were weapons.

I’m sorry he’s gone, Eleanor thought. A picture came before her eyes — the picture of a nice cricketing boy smoking a cigar on a terrace. I’m sorry. . . . Then another picture formed. She was sitting on the same terrace; but now the sun was setting; a maid came out and said, “The soldiers are guarding the line with fixed bayonets!” That was how she had heard of the war — three years ago. And she had thought, putting down her coffee-cup on a little table, Not if I can help it! overcome by an absurd but vehement desire to protect those hills; she had looked at the hills across the meadow. . . . Now she looked at the foreigner opposite.

“How unfair you are,” Nicholas was saying to Sara. “Prejudiced; narrow; unfair,” he repeated, tapping her hand with his finger.

He was saying what Eleanor felt herself.

“Yes. Isn’t it natural . . . ” she began. “Could you allow the Germans to invade England and do nothing?” she said, turning to Renny. She was sorry she had spoken; and the words were not the ones she had meant to use. There was an expression of suffering, or was it anger? on his face.

“I?” he said. “I help them to make shells.”

Maggie stood behind him. She had brought in the meat. “Carve,” she said. He was staring at the meat which she had put down in front of him. He took up the knife and began to carve mechanically.

“Now, Nurse,” she reminded him. He cut another helping.

“Yes,” said Eleanor awkwardly as Maggie took away the plate. She did not know what to say. She spoke without thinking. “Let’s end it as quickly as possible and then . . . ” She looked at him. He was silent. He turned away. He had turned to listen to what the others were saying, as if to take refuge from speaking himself.

“Poppycock, poppycock . . . don’t talk such damned poppycock — that’s what you really said,” Nicholas was saying. His hands were large and clean and the finger-nails were trimmed very close, Eleanor noticed. He might be a doctor, she thought.

“What’s ‘poppy-cock’?” she asked, turning to Renny. For she did not know the word.

“American,” said Renny. “He’s an American,” he said, nodding at Nicholas.

“No,” said Nicholas, turning round, “I am a Pole.”

“His mother was a Princess,” said Maggie as if she were teasing him. That explains the seal on his chain, Eleanor thought. He wore a large old seal on his chain.

“She was,” he said quite seriously. “One of the noblest families in Poland. But my father was an ordinary man — a man of the people. . . . You should have had more self-control,” he added, turning again to Sara.

“So I should,” she sighed. “But then he gave his bridle reins a shake and said, ‘Adieu for evermore, adieu for evermore!’” She stretched out her hand and poured herself another glass of wine.

“You shall have no more to drink,” said Nicholas, moving away the bottle. “She saw herself,” he explained, turning to Eleanor, “on top of a tower, waving a white handkerchief to a knight in armour.”

“And the moon was rising over a dark moor,” Sara murmured, touching a pepper-pot.

The pepper-pot’s a dark moor, Eleanor thought, looking at it. A little blur had come round the edges of things. It was the wine; it was the war. Things seemed to have lost their skins; to be freed from some surface hardness; even the chair with gilt claws, at which she was looking, seemed porous; it seemed to radiate out some warmth, some glamour, as she looked at it.

“I remember that chair,” she said to Maggie. “And your mother . . . ” she added. But she always saw Eugénie not sitting but in movement.

“ . . . dancing,” she added.

“Dancing . . . ” Sara repeated. She began drumming on the table with her fork.

“When I was young, I used to dance,” she hummed.

“All men loved me when I was young. . . . Roses and syringas hung, when I was young, when I was young. D’you remember, Maggie?” She looked at her sister as if they both remembered the same thing.

Maggie nodded. “In the bedroom. A waltz,” she said.

“A waltz . . . ” said Eleanor. Sara was drumming a waltz rhythm on the table. Eleanor began to hum in time to it: “Hoity te, toity te, hoity te. . . . ”

A long-drawn hollow sound wailed out.

“No, no!” she protested, as if somebody had given her the wrong note. But the sound wailed again.

“A fog-horn?” she said. “On the river?”

But as she said it she knew what it was.

The siren wailed again.

“The Germans!” said Renny. “Those damned Germans!” He put down his knife and fork with an exaggerated gesture of boredom.

“Another raid,” said Maggie, getting up. She left the room; Renny followed her.

“The Germans . . . ” said Eleanor as the door shut. She felt as if some dull bore had interrupted an interesting conversation. The colours began to fade. She had been looking at the red chair. It lost its radiance as she looked at it, as if a light had been extinguished underneath.

They heard the rush of wheels in the street. Everything seemed to be going past very quickly. There was the round of feet tapping on the pavement. Eleanor got up and drew the curtains slightly apart. The basement was sunk beneath the pavement, so that she only saw people’s legs and skirts as they went past the area railings. Two men came by walking very quickly; then an old woman, with her skirt swinging from side to side, walked past.

“Oughtn’t we to ask people in?” she said, turning round. But when she looked back the old woman had disappeared. So had the men. The street was now quite empty. The houses opposite were completely curtained. She drew their own curtain carefully. The table, with the gay china and the lamp, seemed ringed in a circle of bright light as she turned back.

She sat down again. “D’you mind air raids?” Nicholas asked, looking at her with his inquisitive expression. “People differ so much.”

“Not at all,” she said. She would have crumbled a piece of bread to show him that she was at her ease; but as she was not afraid, the action seemed to her unnecessary.

“The chances of being hit oneself are so small,” she said. “What were we saying?” she added.

It seemed to her that they had been saying something extremely interesting; but she could not remember what. They sat silent for a moment. Then they heard a shuffling on the stairs.

“The children . . . ” said Sara. They heard the dull boom of a gun in the distance.

Here Renny came in.

“Bring your plates,” he said.

“In here.” He led them into the cellar. It was a large cellar. With its crypt-like ceiling and stone walls it had a damp ecclesiastical look. It was used partly for coal, partly for wine. The light in the centre shone on glittering heaps of coal; bottles of wine wrapped in straw lay on their sides on stone shelves. There was a mouldy smell of wine, straw and damp. It was chilly after the dining-room. Sara came in carrying quilts and dressing- gowns which she had fetched from upstairs. Eleanor was glad to wrap herself in a blue dressing-gown; she wrapped it roun............