On the other side I heard: ‘And may I make so bold as to ask what institutions sponsored your husband’s expedition?’

The diplomat’s wife bravely engaged the Bishop across the gulf that separated them.

‘And what language will you speak when you get to Barcelona?’

‘The language of Reason and Brotherhood, madam,’ and, turning back to me, ‘The speech of the coming century is in thoughts not in words. Do you not agree, Mr Ryder?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘What are words?’ said the Bishop.

‘What indeed?’

‘Mere conventional symbols, Mr Ryder, and this is an age rightly sceptical of conventional symbols.’

My mind reeled; after the parrot-house fever of my wife’s party, and unplumbed emotions of the afternoon, after all the exertions of my wife’s pleasures in New York, after the months of solitude in the steaming, green shadows of the jungle, this was too much. I felt like Lear on the heath, like the Duchess of Malfi bayed by madmen. I summoned cataracts and hurricanoes, and as if by conjury the call was immediately answered.

For some time now, though whether it was a mere trick of the nerves I did not then know, I had felt a recurrent and persistently growing motion – a heave and shudder of the large dining-room as of the breast of a man in deep sleep. Now my wife turned to me and said: ‘Either I am a little drunk or it’s getting rough,’ and, even as she spoke we found ourselves leaning sideways in our chairs; there was a crash and tinkle of falling cutlery by the wall, and on our table the wine glasses all together toppled and rolled over, while each of us steadied the plate and forks and looked at the other with expressions that varied between frank horror in the diplomat’s wife and relief in Julia.

The gale which, unheard, unseen, unfelt, in our enclosed and insulated world had, for an hour, been mounting over us, had now veered and fallen full on our bows.

Silence followed the crash, then a high, nervous babble of laughter. Stewards laid napkins on the pools of spilt wine. We tried to resume the conversation, but all were waiting, as the little ginger man had watched the drop swell and fall from the swan’s beak, for the next great blow; it came, heavier than the last.

‘This is where I say good night to you all,’ said the diplomat’s wife, rising.

Her husband led her to their cabin. The dining-room was emptying fast. Soon only Julia, my wife, and I were left at the table, and, telepathically, Julia said, ‘Like King Lear.’

‘Only each of us is all three of them.’

‘What can you mean?’ asked my wife.

‘Lear, Kent, Fool.’

‘Oh, dear, it’s like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again. Don’t try and explain.’

‘I doubt if I could,’ I said.

Another climb, another vast drop. The stewards were at work making things fast, shutting things up, hustling away unstable ornaments.