Don’t do that again, I said to him the next time we were alone. Do what? he said. Try to touch me like that, when we’re . . . when she’s there. Did I? he said. You could get me transferred, I said. To the Colonies. You know that. Or worse. I thought he should continue to act, in public, as if I were a large vase or a window: part of the background, inanimate or transparent. I’m sorry, he said. I didn’t mean to. But I find it . . . What? I said, when he didn’t go on. Impersonal, he said. How long did it take you to find that out? I said. You can see from the way I was speaking to him that we
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