"Wake up, stoopid," said Ann. "You'll be wasting off like the niggers in Africa if you don't wake up. You can't go sleeping on forever."
"Well, you can, of course, but if you do, I'll be thinking you're a case. You're not a case, are you? You weren't last night."
She spoke as though to be called a case was the horridest of insults, and he took it as such and roused himself not to deserve it.
"That's better," she said. "Nothing to eat all day."
"I expect your stomach knows best. Now, then, stir yourself. You got to write home."
She gave him writing materials and he drew up to the table and sat staring at the blank sheet of paper. He took pen in hand, but could not write, could not concentrate his will even that much.
"Well, I'm blowed! If you aren't the funniest. . . . It's to your wife! Don't you know what to say to your wife?"
Then he thought of Linda in a friendly, distant fashion, as someone charming and taking whom he had known, of whom it was pleasant to think.
"I want my clothes. I don't think I want my books. You can sell the car. You gave me a nice picture once by some German. I think I should like you to send that. I have been walking about London. It is very wonderful. A railway porter was nice to me, and there are other friendly people."
"The address is 6 Mitcham Mews, West Kensington."
He wrote that down. There was something else he wanted to say, but he could not fix in his mind a sufficient image of Linda to be able to write to her. So he gave it up presently and only added: "That's all," and his signature.
The letter was addressed and stamped, and Ann, still limping, took it to the post.
"I've fixed you up. You're to sleep with Jimmy at No. 10 until your things come, and then we'll begin to think. You're not much use to anybody now, are you?"
"No," said he. Then he began to stammer out an apology.
"Silly," said Ann. "Just a lost boy, that's what you are. Lucky for you it was me and not the police found you. They'd have sent you back where you came from." She saw that it was useless to joke with René and soon dropped her bantering tone. She took him for a walk round the houses, and was delighted when he remembered that he must have a clean collar and a toothbrush; a return to grace, or sense.