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Show 206 "Now really," said the Colonel. "For Pete's sake," said the General, grasping Harriet's arm, "what took you so long?" And he guided her to his car. General Greaves had made his reputation through swift, unpredictable action, tactical about-faces that altered whole battlefields. Now it happened in Oji. It was as if HQ had moved, said Phyllis; taken the Nissan-maru and come to Naka. From that moment the General saw more of Harriet than Dinah. He continued to sleep in the Engineers' compound, but for his social life drove around tha bay whenever he wished. Not, everybody granted, that there was anything "untoward" between them; it was merely the coming together of two dominant, attractive and somewhat ruthless natures. Sex had -- as yet, at least - no part: "Harriet's too mean to be a whore," somebody observed. And Harriet accepted the relationship as eagerly as he; for the first time she felt happy in Oji. Now the loneliness was gone, the sense of derailment, desolate ends. The change was apparent at once; it was almost as if she began to glitter. Admirers like Evelyn, indeed, saw it as a sort of tableau: in the center the dazzling, incomparable Harriet, at one side her gentlemanly, soft-spoken husband, at the other this powerful, once-handsome figure from the outer, and upper world. |