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?’ he said, still miffed.
    â€˜It is a way of working against jinxs. If you’re a player in world events, even a minor player, then spirit is a factor in the outcome. If you behave as if something will succeed, it helps it succeed.’
    â€˜How so?’
    â€˜All the attitudes of the players on the diplomatic stage have an impact on the psychology of those at the discussions—especially the Secretariat.’
    â€˜Does pretending to be optimistic still work? Like pretending not to be afraid of a dog? Does that work?’
    â€˜Precisely, it’s like pretending not to be afraid of a dog. It’s the role of the Secretariat to engender an affirmative temperature in international negotiations. Fervour is a diplomatic tool. The Secretariat are engineers of mentalité .’
    She wondered why a dog would not know if a person was pretending.
    He grunted but it was a grunt she knew, the grunt before giving up and becoming pliable, becoming her pet.
    â€˜What will you write about it?’
    â€˜About the US and the League?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Robert adopted the voice of a radio announcer and said, ‘ “President Woodrow Wilson helped establish the League after the War but the United States Senate voted to stay out. Now it looks as if the United States is joining the world community and that the vacant chair kept for the United States will at last be filled etc, etc, etc.” ’
    She’d got him to be playful. Her breast pressing against his arm through the lace of her brassiere and the silk of her gown was working its magic.
    She took his hand and amorously put both their hands on her knee.
    His fingers closed on her leg and the silk stocking.
    â€˜Talking of Manchuria, I heard a strange story today,’ she said. She told him of the suicide of the Japanese woman.‘Have you ever heard of a woman doing such a thing?’
    â€˜The Japanese have higher levels of devotion to the state.’
    â€˜Do wives have these higher levels of devotion—to their husbands and the state?’
    â€˜I suspect so.’ Then he added, ‘On another scale, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen in marriage? Devotion.’
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    She waited for him to press home this point against her behaviour tonight but he veered.
    â€˜I once talked with a Japanese general who said that from a military point of view earthquakes were good for the national character and useful for military training,’ he laughed. ‘He welcomed a good earthquake.’
    She decided that he really was a bit crocked.
    â€˜Potato wants to leave for Manchuria,’ he said.
    Good, she thought. Geneva would be a happier place without him. ‘Good,’ she said.
    They sat there silently. Was she, perhaps, in her heart, not properly devoted? And therefore not properly married ?
    That was the point which had been niggling at her all night and it broke through the clouds like a star—she was perhaps not a proper wife .
    That was the point.
    She felt a panic about this thought.
    She had a vocation and, as yet, she had no burning desire to have a family, she did not run the household except in the smallest ways, she earned more than her husband, and she had private income, as well, which had survived the Depression. And, for no good reason, after a year of marriage she still hadn’t told him everything about the extent of her private income.
    And if she were a proper wife, perhaps she would’ve told him about the United States before his deadline.
    How much of the wedding contract had she discounted?
    Were they then, just lovers pretending to be man and wife?Or worse, was he a proper husband and was she just a lover?
    What was really in her marriage contract?
    The Japanese wife was a marker at the far side of the field of marriage. And she was perhaps on the other boundary, if she were, in fact, inside the boundary at all.
    She was, perhaps, a Special