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 carve. Standing so, his back was toward her. He made some pretext to turn, hoping to divine her mood; but her face was averted. There was ominous restraint in the shape of her back. The anticlimax of all this, the delicatessen-shop smell, after his ecstasy in the garden, fretted his nerves. Brutal shouts of wrath clamoured in his mind. It was infuriating to see her so appealing: can't one ever get away from it, must a man love even his wife? He wanted to ask her this, but feared she would miss the humour of it. He longed to horrify her with his rage, so that he could get rid of it and then show the tenderness he secretly felt. Certainly I'm the colossus of sentimentalists, he thought. I can turn directly from one kind of love to another. Queer, the way it looks now it's my feeling for Joyce that is disinterested and pure, my love for Phyl that's really carnal. How did this morality business get so mixed up?

He amused himself by putting the slivers of chicken in two piles: the dark meat for Martin, the white for Joyce. How white she had been in the surf. . . . But that was only a dream. This is real, this is earnest. This is Now, I'm cutting sandwiches for the Picnic. This is what Time is doing to me; what is it doing to her? How did our