It was as if she had sent him a box or a paper weight or a clock.  It wasn’t the gift, it was the thought that mattered.  She knew that he had never read any of her books, but they were as good a vehicle for her affection as another.

“You are the only person,” she had said to him, “to whom my books are really tokens,” and she had smiled very radiantly as if he were the only person who had discovered the real secret of her books.  George reflected sadly that he was the only person who understood her.  Why, it was maddening to think that any one reading those paragraphs in the “Times” might imagine her middle-aged and ugly and spectacled.  And how were they to know that her knowledge of cricket averages was probably greater than that of the Selection Committee?  Probably, too, they pictured her with short hair, June, with her crinkling crown of autumn beach leaves; and thick ankles, June with her Shepperson legs; and blunt inky fingers, June with her rosy pointing nails and her hands like uncurling fans.

His mind went to other things, her low hard volleys and the lithe, easy grace with which she leapt over the lawn-tennis net.  In thinking of her, the irritation her writing caused him decreased.  It seemed altogether too irrelevant.  June was the sort of woman one did things for.  Helpless, he reflected with satisfaction, thinking of her tininess.  Why, he could lift her up with one hand.  George always mixed up physical phenomena with psychological fact.  Small women were in need of protection; pale women were delicate; clever women were masculine—­the greatest of all crimes.  June might think it funny to be clever, but no one could deny that she was feminine—­the sort of woman who appealed to you to do little tiny things for her (things you would have done in any case), as if they were very important and very dramatic and very difficult.  George liked the sort of woman who said to him:  “Mr. Carruthers, you who know everything——­” It was apt, of course, to lead you into a lot of trouble, but that was one of the necessary results of being a man and having a superior intellect.  June wasn’t like that.  She never asked you for legal advice or financial tips.  She simply thought it most angelic of you to have fetched her coat and so clever of you to have noticed that it was getting chilly.  And when you sent her flowers on her birthday, she would explain to you the flow of delight she had felt and perhaps a tiny little moment of surprise until she realised that of course it wasn’t surprising at all, but just exactly what she knew at the bottom of her heart you would do—­you, who were such a wonderful friend.  Only the flowers were far more beautiful than she could have imagined and how had you been able to find them?

George had a photograph of June on his writing table.  People were apt to stop short at it and say:  “Is that the great June Rivers, the writer?” And he would brush the question aside—­one must be loyal—­and say:  “She is a friend of mine,” rather stiffly, as if they had said that she had run away from her husband or been found drunk.