He studies her, hard-faced. ‘What’s wrong, baby, haven’t I satisfied you?’ He says this wearily, at a loss. Ella hastens to assure him that he has; although he has not. But she understands this is not his fault, she has not had a real orgasm since Paul left her.

She says, dry in spite of herself: ‘Well, I don’t think there’s much conviction in it for either of us.’

Again the hard, weary, clinical look. ‘I have a beautiful wife,’ he announces. ‘But she doesn’t satisfy me sexually. I need more.’

This silences Ella. She feels as if she’s in some perverse emotional no-man’s-land that has nothing to do with her, although she has temporarily strayed into it. Yet she realizes that he really does not understand what is the matter with what he offers her. He has a large penis; he is ‘good in bed’. And that’s it. Ella stands, silent, thinking that the weariness of sensuality he has in bed is the other side of his cold world-weariness out of it. He stands looking her over. Now, thinks Ella, now he’s going to lash out, he’s going to let me have it. She sets herself to take it.

‘I’ve learned,’ he drawls, sharp with wounded vanity, ‘that it’s not necessary to have a beautiful woman in the sack. It’s enough to concentrate on one part of her — anything. There’s always something beautiful in even an ugly woman. An ear for instance. Or a hand.’

Ella suddenly laughs and tries to catch his eye thinking that surely he will laugh. Because for the couple of hours before they had got into bed, their relationship had been good-humoured and humorous. What he has just said is positively the parody of a worldly-wise philanderer’s remark. Surely he will smile at it? But no, it had been intended to hurt, and he would not withdraw it, even by a smile.

‘Lucky I have nice hands, if nothing else,’ says Ella at last, very dry.

He comes to her, picks up her hands, kisses them, wearily, rake-like: ‘Beautiful, doll, beautiful.’

He leaves and she thinks for the hundredth time that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.

That evening Ella goes to Julia’s house, and finds Julia in what she classified as ‘Patricia’s mood’ — that is, sardonic rather than bitter.

Julia tells Ella, humorous, that the man, the actor who had called her a ‘castrating woman’ had turned up a few days before with flowers, just as if nothing had happened. ‘He was really quite surprised that I wouldn’t play. He was ever so jolly and companionable. And I sat there, looking at him, and remembering how I had cried my eyes out after he had left — you remember, there were two nights, and I had been ever so sweet and kind putting him at his ease, and then he said I was … and even then I couldn’t hurt his damned feelings. And I sat there and I thought: Do you suppose he’s forgotten what he said or why he said it? Or aren’t we supposed to care what they say? We’re just supposed to be tough enough to take anything? Sometimes I think we’re all in a sort of sexual mad house.’