By the time that we reached the table the rest of the party had arranged themselves. On either side of the Captain’s empty chair sat Julia and Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander; besides them there was an English diplomat and his wife, Senator Stuyvesant Oglander, and an American clergyman at present totally isolated between two pairs of empty chairs. This clergyman later described himself – redundantly it seemed – as an Episcopalian Bishop. Husbands and wives sat together here. My wife was confronted with a quick decision, and although the steward attempted to direct us otherwise, sat so that she had the senator and I the Bishop. Julia gave us both a little dismal signal of sympathy.

‘I’m miserable about the party,’ she said, ‘my beastly maid totally disappeared with every dress I have. She only turned up half an hour ago. She’d been playing ping-pong.’

‘I’ve been telling the Senator what he missed,’ said Mrs Stuyvesant Oglander. ‘Wherever Celia is, you’ll find she knows all the significant people.’

‘On my right,’ said the Bishop, ‘a significant couple are expected. They take all their meals in their cabin except when they have been informed in advance that the Captain will be present.’

We were a gruesome circle; even my wife’s high social spirit faltered. At moments I heard bits of her conversation.

‘…an extraordinary little red-haired man. Captain Foulenough in person.’

‘But I understood you to say, Lady Celia, that you were unacquainted with him.’

‘I meant he was like Captain Foulenough.’

‘I begin to comprehend. He impersonated this friend of yours in order to come to your party.’

‘No, no. Captain Foulenough is simply a comic character.’

‘There seems to have been nothing very amusing about this other man. Your friend is a comedian?’

‘No, no. Captain Foulenough is an imaginary character in an English paper. You know, like your “Popeye”.’

The senator laid down knife and fork. ‘To recapitulate: an imposter came to your party and you admitted him because of a fancied resemblance to a fictitious character in a cartoon.’

‘Yes, I suppose that was it really.’

The senator looked at his wife as much as to say: ‘Significant people, huh!’

I heard Julia across the table trying to trace, for the benefit of the diplomat, the marriage-connexions of her Hungarian and Italian cousins. The diamonds flashed in her hair and on her fingers, but her hands were nervously rolling little balls of crumb, and her starry head drooped in despair.

The Bishop told me of the goodwill mission on which he was travelling to Barcelona…‘a very, very valuable work of clearance has been performed, Mr Ryder. The time has now come to rebuild on broader foundations. I have made it my aim to reconcile the so-called Anarchists and the so-called Communists, and with that in view I and my committee have digested all the available documentation of the subject. Our conclusion, Mr Ryder, is unanimous. There is no fundamental diversity between the two ideologies. It is a matter of personalities, Mr Ryder, and what personalities have put asunder personalities can unite….’