Today the telephone rang very early — Jane Bond for Saul Green. Knocked on his door, no answer. Several times he hasn’t been in at all, all night. Was going to tell her that he hadn’t been in, but it occurred to me that wasn’t tactful, if she has really ‘taken a fall’ over him. Knocked at the door again, looked in. He was there. Struck by how he slept, in a tight curve under neat bedclothes. Called him, but no answer. Went close, put my hand on his shoulder, no response. Suddenly frightened — he was so still that for the second I thought he was dead, there was such a quality of absolute stillness. What I could see of his face paper-white. Like fine slightly crinkled paper. Tried to turn him over. Very cold to the touch — could feel the cold striking up into my hands. I felt terror. I can feel, even now, on the palms of my hands, the cold heavy quality of his flesh through his pyjamas. Then he woke — but suddenly. He simultaneously put his arms up round my neck, in a frightened child’s gesture, and was sitting up, his legs already swinging over the edge of the bed. He looked terrified. I said: ‘For goodness sake, it’s only Jane Bond on the telephone.’ He stared — it took a long half-minute for the words to get through to him, and I repeated them. Then he stumbled to the telephone. He said: ‘Yeah, yeah, no’ — very abrupt. I went past him down the stairs. The thing had upset me. I could feel the deadly coldness on my palms. And then his arms around my neck speaking a language different from anything he was when awake. I called up to him to come and have some coffee. Repeated it several times. He came down, very quiet, very pale, on guard. Gave him coffee. I said: ‘You sleep very heavily.’ He said: ‘What? Yeah.’ Then he made a half-remark about the coffee, tailed off. He was not hearing what I said. His eyes were at the same time concentrated and wary and absent. I don’t think he saw me. He sat stirring his coffee. Then he began talking, and I swear it was at random, he might have chosen any other subject. He was talking about how to bring up a small girl. He was very intelligent about it all, and very academic. He talked and talked — I said something, but he did not know that I had. He talked — I found myself absent-minded, then with my attention half on what he said, realized I was listening for the word I in what he said. I, I, I, I, I — I began to feel as if the word I was being shot at me like bullets from a machine gun. For a moment I fancied that his mouth, moving fast and mobile was a gun of some kind. I broke in, he didn’t hear, I broke in again, saying: ‘You’re very well-educated about children, have you been married?’ He started, his mouth was slightly open, he stared. Then the loud, abrupt young laugh: ‘Married, who are you kidding?’ It offended me, it was so clearly a warning to me. This man, warning me, a woman, about marriage, was quite a different person from the man compulsively talking, compulsively spinning out intelligent words (but punctuated every second by the word I) about how to bring up a small girl to be ‘a real woman’, and quite different again from the man who had undressed me with his eyes on the first day. I felt my stomach clench, and for the first time I understood that my anxiety state was due to Saul Green.