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 And mother. Then, when I stayed behind to see the vans off; when I saw them taking down the overmantels, and your books went out, and the round table, and the sofa, I felt quite suddenly 'I'm free.' I said to myself, 'If Richard asks me again' But I thought he must be tired of asking me. I said, 'If only he asks me again I can get away before this new house fastens on to me.

With her stoop, her untidiness, her vagueness and confusion, her irritating streaks of mysticism, he wondered: Could any man find her desirable?

He remembered Richard Evans, thin and jerky and vaguely displeasing to his orderly mind; with his terrible spasms of eloquence and his straggly moustache. He had come in often when they were at No. 17 and sat for hours in the lamplight, with his shadow gesticulating behind him on the wall.

"Nobody needs me," she was saying. "Nobody wants me, really, except him. I see it now, and I've got to"

"What about me? Don't I count? Don't I need you? What about all these years;