Gaunt moved his hand above her elbow. ‘And why do you hope that?’

‘Because I want to read it. You see, I’ve seen your Rochester, and once somebody who was staying here had an American magazine, I think it was called the Theatre Arts, and there was an article in it with photographs of you as different people. I liked the Hamlet one the best because—’

‘Well?’ asked Gaunt when she paused.

Barbara stumbled over her next speech. ‘Because—well, I suppose because I know it best. No, that’s not really why, I didn’t know it at all well until then, but I read it again, lots of times and tried to imagine how you sounded when you said the speech in the photograph. Of course after hearing Mr Rochester it was easier.’

‘Which photograph was that, Dikon?’ asked Gaunt over his shoulder.

‘It was Rosencrantz…’ Barbara began eagerly.

‘Ah, I remember.’

Gaunt stood still and put her from him, holding her by the shoulder as he had held the gratified small-part actor who played Rosencrantz in New York. Dikon heard him draw in his breath as he always did when he collected himself to rehearse. In the silence of that warm evening, amidst the reek of sulphur and against the nebulous thermal background, the beautiful voice spoke quietly:

‘ “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” ‘

Dikon was irritated and disturbed by Barbara’s rapturous silence and infuriated by the whispered ‘Thank you’ with which she finally ended it. ‘She’s making a perfect little ass of herself,’ he thought, but he knew Gaunt would not find her attitude excessive. He had an infinite capacity for absorbing adulation.

‘Can you go on?’ Gaunt was saying. ‘“Which dreams—”’

‘“Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”’

‘“A dream itself is but a shadow!” Do you hear this, Dikon?’ cried Gaunt. ‘She knows the lines.’ He moved forward again, Barbara at his side. ‘You’ve got a voice, my child,’ he said. ‘How have you escaped the accent? Do you know what you’ve been talking about? You must hear the music, but you must also achieve the meaning. Say it again: thinking—“Which dreams indeed are ambition.” ’ But Barbara fumbled the second time, and they spoke the line backwards and forward to each other as they crossed the pumice to the house. Gaunt was treating her to an almost indecent helping of charm, Dikon considered.

The lights were up in the house and Mrs Claire was hurriedly doing the blackout. She had left the door open and a square of warmth reached across the verandah to the pumice. Before they came to its margin Gaunt checked Barbara again.

‘We say goodnight here,’ he said. ‘The dusk becomes you well. Goodnight, Miss Claire.’