My general disillusion was such that even the hotel guests appeared in a different more suspect light. What secret anxieties and guilty yearnings lay hidden behind their masks of cheerful greeting and warm words? This jaundiced outlook lasted for a week or more, but some inner mental process gradually drew me back towards equilibrium; something in my make-up seemed to refuse to allow me to be permanently miserable.
The arrival of an attractive couple from South Wales, one dark and one fair, helped along my progress towards a less negative frame of mind. As soon as I saw them I could tell they were having an affair. The way they stood side by side, their arms almost but not quite touching and the way they glanced lovingly at each other made it evident that they doted on one another. My first reaction was to think they were making fools of themselves by openly showing their infatuation, and to wonder how long it would take for the unpleasant side of their natures to spoil their illusions about each other, but for three days their obvious affection did not waver. My envy of their happiness grew stronger and stronger, until my sourness towards them seemed unreasonable even to me, since they had done nothing to deserve my sneering thoughts. Then I felt ashamed of my attitude; my feelings of misery and frustration were, after all, not of their making.
On the last morning of their stay they had not come down by the time breakfast was over, presumably tired by sight-seeing during the days and late nights in the clubs. The cleaner reported that he had left their room untouched as the door was locked and they did not respond to his knock.
At two o'clock they had not emerged and I went up to check. The door was still locked and there was no answer to my gentle tapping. I used my pass key to let myself in. In the semidarkness, covered by a sheet, they lay together in the twin bed nearest the window, their limbs wrapped around each other. One of them was breathing slowly and heavily. Only their heads and one foot protruded from the sheet, a corner being wrapped around the ankle.
Neither of them stirred. I could not resist gazing down on their unconscious figures, working out to whom the exposed foot belonged from the way they lay beneath the contorted sheet. How fortunate they were, sleeping contentedly in each other's arms. If they could lie so happily together, so clearly a couple even in sleep, what was wrong with me?
A growing sense of guilt about spying on them broke the spell cast by their sleeping forms. What was I doing there, sneaking around in their room while they lay clasped together in sleep? What if one of them woke, discovered me and thought I was there to steal from them? I crept out, shutting the door with hardly a sound, and stole away the mental image of them lying together under the crumpled white sheet.