It was years, Gaunt thought, since he had met a young woman who was simply shy. Nervous, or deliberately coy young women, yes; but not a girl who blushed with pleasure and was too wellmannered to turn away her head. If only she would always behave like this she would be charming. He was taking exactly the right line with her. He began to talk to her about himself.

Barbara was enchanted. He spoke so intimately, as if she were somebody with a special gift of understanding. He told her all sorts of things. How, as a boy in school, he had been set to read ‘The Eve of Crispian’ speech from Henry V, and had started in the accepted wooden style which he now imitated comically for her amusement. Then, so he told her, something had happened to him. The heady phrases began to ring through his voice. To the astonishment of his English master (here followed a neat mimicry of the English master) and, strange to say, the enthralment of his classmates, he gave the speech something of its due. ‘There were mistakes, of course. I had no technique beyond an instinctive knowledge of certain values. But—’ he tapped the breast pocket of his coat—‘it was there. I knew then that I must become a Shakespearean actor. I heard the lines as if someone else spoke them:

‘And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered.’

Gulls mewed overhead and the sea thudded and dragged at the coast, a thrilling accompaniment, Barbara thought, to the lovely words.

‘Isn’t there any more?’ she asked greedily.

‘Little ignoramus! There’s a lot more.’ He took her hand. ‘You are my Cousin Westmoreland. Listen, my fair cousin.’ And he gave her the whole speech. It was impossible for him to be anything but touched and delighted by her eagerness, by the tears of excitement that stood in her eyes when he ended. He still held her hand. Dikon, limping over the brow of the hill ahead of Simon, was just in time to see him lightly kiss it.