Wolf stared at her. Was there then some queer inner world, parallel to the one that was important to him, wherein women encountered one another, and without whose ritual life was completely unreal to them? “God!” he thought to himself. “If this is so, the sooner I get the secret of this ‘other reality,’ the better for both Gerda and me!”

“Well, I only beg one thing of you, sweetheart,” he went on aloud, “and that is that you don’t try and make those funny scones again that you made for Christie. I’ll get some halfpenny buns or teacakes at Pimpernel’s.”

“Halfpenny buns!” she repeated contemptuously.

He began to raise his voice. “They’re the very nicest things! How silly you are! But I don’t care what you get, as long as there’s plenty of thin bread-and-butter.”

“I can’t cut it! I never could cut it!” she cried helplessly, her enormous grey eyes beginning to fill with tears.