It was true that he did not. There was always a period of time, more or less brief, when they met after an interval, when Ducane fumbled, flattered. He was patronizing Willy now, and they both knew it. The barrier created between them by this spontaneous, this as it seemed automatic, flattery and patronage could be broken easily by Willy's directness if Willy had the sheer energy to break it. Sometimes he had. Sometimes he had not, and would sit by listlessly while Ducane struggled with their meeting. Ducane in fact could overcome this automatic falseness in himself unaided, but it took a little time and a very conscious measure of seriousness and attention. Willy was always difficult.
'I envy something,' said Ducane. 'Perhaps I just wish I had been a poet.'
'I doubt if you even wish that,' said Willy. He lay back and closed his eyes. It looked as if it was one of his listless days.
'To live with poetry is next best,' said Ducane. 'My daily bread is quite other.' He read out at random a couplet from the open page.
'Quare, dum licet, inter nos laetemur amantes: non satis est ullo tern pore longus amor.'
A physical vision of Kate came to him out of the words of Propertius, especially out of that final amor, so much stronger than the lilting Italian amore. He saw the furry softness of her shoulders as he had often seen them in the evening. He had never caressed her bare shoulders. Arnor.
'Stuff, stuff, stuff,' said Willy. 'These were cliches for Propertius.
In couplets like that he was talking in his sleep. Well, most human beings are talking in their sleep, even poets, even great poets.' He added, 'The only amor I know anything about is amor fati.'
'Surely a manifestation of pure wickedness,' said Ducane. 'Do you really believe that?'
'That it's wicked to love destiny? Yes. What happens is usually what oughtn't to happen. Why love it?'
'Of course destiny shouldn't be thought of as purposive,' said Willy, 'it should be thought of as mechanical.'
'But it isn't mechanical!' said Ducane. 'We aren't mechanical!'
'We are the most mechanical thing of all. That is why we can be forgiven.'
'Who says we can be forgiven? Anyway that needn't imply love of fate.'
'It's not easy of course. Perhaps it's impossible. Can a thing be required of us and yet be impossible? I don't see why not.'
'Submit to fate but don't love it. To love it one must be drunk.'
'And one should not be drunk?' 'Of course not.' 'Supposing being drunk is the only way to carry on?' 'Oh stop this, Willy!' said Ducane. These conversations with Willy frightened him sometimes. He was never sure if Willy meant what he said or meant the opposite of what he said. He felt as if he were being used, as if Willy were using him as a hard neutral surface against which to crush, like insects, the thoughts which haunted him. Like a baffled witness, he was afraid of being deliberately led to make some damaging, some perhaps fatal, admission. He felt both powerless and responsible. He said, 'There must be other ways of carrying on.' 'Even without a God!' 'Yes.' 'I don't see why,' said Willy. Ducane felt, as so often before, yawning between them the terrible gulf which divides the mentally healthy from the mentally crippled. 'But you are working?' said Ducane. He knew that he was falling back into the tone of patronizing. Yet he feared Willy's obscure intensities and feared that he might be at such moments employed by Willy to confirm unwittingly some final edict of despair. 'No.' 'Oh come!' Ducane knew that Willy had looked forward to this visit. He knew too that the visit was rendering Willy unspeakably miserable. This had happened before. In fact it often happened in spite of the fiction kept up briskly by everyone, including the two protagonists, that Ducane was eminently 'good for' Willy. Ducane thought, if I were not the tied-up puritan that I am I would touch him now, take his hand or something. 'What seat?' Willy was observing his friend. He spoke the question caressingly, exaggerating his foreign accent. It was a ritual question. Ducane laughed. Some current flowed again, but flowing away from Willy, leaving him more isolated and unreadabl' than ever. 'Oh, I'm just worrying about you.' 'Do not do so, John. Tell me of your own things. Tell me about life at that famous place «the office». Do you know I have never been in that place where so many people spend their lives. Tell me about the office.' The wraith of Radeechy rose before Ducane like a physical presence in the room, and with it came the puzzlement and the curious fear which he had felt before. He knew that he must not tell Willy about Radeechy. Suicide is infectious, which is one reason why it is wrong. But he felt too that there was some germ of craziness here, perhaps even of evil, to which he should not expose the organism of Willy's soul, frail in ways which he could not determine or even imagine. He said 'It's very dull in the office. You are well out of it.' He said to himself, I must remember to tell the others not to mention Radeechy to Willy. He thought, if Willy were ever to commit suicide I should never forgive myself, I should know it was my fault. Yet his affection was impotent. What could he do? If he could only persuade Willy to talk to him about the past. He said abruptly, 'You sleeping all right these days?» 'Yes, fine, until the cuckoo wakes me up about four thirty!' 'No bad dreams?' They stared at each other, Ducane still standing with his tea cup and Willy stretched out in the chair. Willy smiled a slow rather cunning smile and began to whistle softly. There was a sharp rap on the door which then flew open to admit the twins, marching abreast and talking at once. 'We've brought you something!' cried Edward. 'You'll never guess what it is!' cried Henrietta. They marched up to Willy and laid a light soft spherical object on his knees. Willy straightened up to lean over it exclaiming with interest. 'Whatever can it be? What do you think it is, John?' Ducane moved over to look at the elongated ball of dull green, a few inches long, which Willy was touching with a curious finger. 'Some sort of bird's nest, I suppose,' he said. He felt himself de trop, a spoilsport, an intruder upon a scene of intimates whose rhythm he could not catch. 'It's a long-tailed tit's nest,' cried Edward. 'They've brought up their babies,' cried Henrietta. 'We watched them building the nest, we watched them all through, and now they've gone away. Isn't it a beautiful nest? You see, outside it's made of moss and lichen, see how they've woven it together, and inside it's all lined with feathers.' 'One man counted more than two thousand feathers in a long-tailed tit's nest!' cried Edward. 'It's very beautiful,' said Willy. 'Thank you, twins!' He looked up at Ducane over the nest which he was holding lightly in his hands. 'Goodbye, John, thank you for coming.' 'A bad crow tried to drive them away,' Henrietta was explaining, 'but they were so brave ' Willy and Ducane smiled at each other. Ducane's smile was ironical and rueful. Willy's smile was apologetic and very sad in some way which Ducane could not fathom. With a salute, Ducane turned to the door. Willy shouted after him, 'I'm all right, you know. Tell them I'm all right.' Ducane walked down the meadow path of clipped grass and into the spotted shade of the beech wood. When he came to the smooth grey tree trunk on which he had embraced Kate he did not sit down upon it. He stood for a moment or two quite still. Then he knelt down in the crisp dry beech leaves, leaning his arms on the warm 
