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“Slapton,” he said.

I nodded. “That’s right,” I said. “That’s where I want to go.” I backed the car a little and then swung her forward over the pavement of that narrow street and went gently up between the houses for fear that I should wake the sleeping people of the town, and over a bridge across a river and so out into the moonlit country where I was alone again.

I shall always be alone. It seemed to me then that I was back in the little town that I had left that afternoon, and although I suppose that these things must have happened earlier in the day I cannot expunge them from the sequence of my memories of the night. I think they may have happened to me that afternoon. I only know they happened to me that night.

There was a sunset in the room. There must have been, because there is no other light that could have given to her face and throat the warm glow, translucent, that was spreading slowly downwards as she leaned forward to scrape the ashes from the grate. It was early in April, and it was a Wednesday, because that was her free day. It was just after tea. I remember that because she had given me tea in her little room; the teapot and the large, blue-rimmed cups with oranges on them were still upon the table. I don’t know why there was a fire, or how there could have been a sunset at tea-time on that day. But there was. No other light could have given to her the warm colours that I remember, and I remember them so well.