I
I .
OUR FRIEND JUDITH
479
should never have left the cat to
go
swimming. Well, and
then I decided to leave the next day. And I did. And that's
all. The whole thing was a mistake, from start to finish."
"Going to Italy at alI?"
"Oh, to go for a holiday would have been all right."
"You've done all that work for nothing? You mean you
aren't going to make use of all that research?"
"No. It was a mistake."
"Why don't you leave it a few weeks and see how things
are then?"
"Why?"
"You might feel differently about it."
"What an extraordinary thing to say. Why should
I?
Oh,
you mean, time passing, healing wounds--that sort of thing?
What an extraordinary idea. It's always seemed to me an
extraordinary idea. No, right from the beginning I've felt
ill
at ease with the whole business, not myself at all."
"Ra_ther irrationally, I should have said."
Judith considered this, very seriously. She frowned while
she thought it over. Then she said: "But if one cannot rely on
what one feels, what can one rely on?"
"On what one thinks, I should have expected you to say."
"Should you? Why? Really, you people are all very
strange. I don't understand you." She turned off the electric
fire, and her face closed up. She smiled, friendly and distant
and
said: "I don't really see any point at all in discussing it."
