It was one of those sad late September evenings when by switching on a bar of the electric fire one realises at last that summer is over.

‘This may sound a cynical thing to say, but don’t you think men sometimes leave difficulties to be solved by other people or to solve themselves?

‘What woman?’ I asked stupidly, thinking as I did so how melodramatic Winifred sounded, talking about ‘that woman’ as if she were in a play or a novel. ‘Allegra Gray,’ she stammered in a burst of tears. I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every

I suppose one must bear the humiliation of having made a mistake. I obviously had no idea of her true character. You see, I thought her such a fine person.’ She was certainly very pretty, I thought, but I did not say it.

I would have a rest this afternoon, for Winifred had gone back to the vicarage and was comforting Julian. I felt a little sorry for him, surrounded as he would be by excellent women. But at least he would be safe from people like Mrs Gray; Sister Blatt would defend him fiercely against all such perils, I knew. Perhaps it might after all be my duty

I suddenly felt very tired and thought how all over England, and perhaps, indeed, anywhere where there was a church and a group of workers, these little frictions were going on. Somebody else decorating the pulpit when another had always done it, somebody’s gift of flowers being relegated to an obscure window, somebody’s cleaning of the brasses

‘I will if you like,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but of course it’s not really my business.’ I did not then know to the extent I do now that practically anything may be the business of an unattached woman with no troubles of her own, who takes a kindly interest in those of her friends.

‘I shall look forward to hearing your paper,’ I said, feeling that some effort was required and that it was up to me to make it. ‘Oh, you will find it deadly dull,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t expect too much.’ I forebore to remark that women like me really expected very little – nothing, almost.

‘I know the kind of person I should like to marry,’ he went on, ‘and I thought I had found her. But perhaps I looked too far and there might have been somebody nearer at hand.’ I stared into the electric fire and wished it had been a coal one, though the functional glowing bar was probably more suitable for this kind of occasion. ‘I cannot see what