was getting dark.
«Whatever was that?»
«The balloon? Oh some boy gave it to her.»
«But how does it stay up?»
«It's filled with hydrogen or something.»
«Why did she cut the string?»
«I can't imagine. Just some sort of act of aggression. She's full of strange fancies just now.»
«Is she unhappy?»
«Girls of that age are always unhappy.»
«Love, I suppose.»
«I don't think she's had love yet. She feels she's somebody very special and she's just beginning to realize that she's not very talented.»
«That sounds like the human condition.»
«Poor child.»
«Oh she's all right, she's lucky. And as you say, it's the human condition. Well, good night, Bradley. I know you want to get away from me.»
«No, no-«I don't mean it in a nasty way! You're so shy. I love it. Kiss me.»
I kissed her quickly but very fully in the darkness underneath the tree.
«I may write to you,» she said.
«Do that.»
«Don't worry. Nothing for worry.»
«I know. Good night. And thanks.»
Rachel gave a weird little laugh and vanished into the obscurity. I began to walk quickly along the next road in the direction of the tube station.
I found that my heart was beating rather violently. I could not make out whether something very important had happened or not. I thought, I shall know tomorrow. Now there was nothing to be done except to rest upon an immediate sense of the experience. Rachel still hovered round me like a perfume. But in my mind with great clarity I saw Arnold, as if he were looking at me from the far end of an illuminated corridor. Whatever had happened had happened to Arnold too.
Just then I saw the balloon again. It was moving slowly along, a little ahead of me, over the tops of the houses. It was lower than it had been before and seemed to be very gradually descending. The street lamps had been turned on, giving a local ineffectual light beneath a sky which was glowing but nearly dark, and in which the pale object was barely visible. A few people were walking along the road, but no one except myself seemed to have noticed the strange wanderer. I began to hurry, trying to gauge its direction. In the suburban villas rectangles of light were appearing in the lower rooms. Sometimes undrawn curtains showed insipid pastel-shaded interiors and sometimes the blue flicker of television. Up above, the neat silhouettes of roofs and the bunchy silhouettes of trees were outlined against a dark bluish sky through which the faint globe, its tail now entirely invisible, floated onward. I began to run.
