The old man said, ‘How polite she is. No formality, please, with us.’

He did not smile, yet the sculptured motionless creases of his face were also masklike.

Age itself was held up before them, and they peered through, the bright eyes of rats in a wall.

‘Later,’ said the old woman, ‘you will meet all the others. One by one. Here and there. No hurry.’

‘We dine, you see,’ said the old man. He added, ‘I like to dine. It’s civilized. But the rest... We keep to different hours.’

‘You’ll grow accustomed,’ said Anna. ‘You must do exactly as you like here. Now it is your home.’

‘No,’ said Rachaela. She spoke too quickly, violently.

They did not notice, or did not care.

Stephan said, ‘We invited you.’

‘Which of you wrote to me—the typed letter?’

‘Oh, not us,’ said Anna. The tide of her face flowed. ‘Not we.’

‘Nasty machines,’ said Stephan. He grimaced and brushed the crumbs of the typewriter off his hands.

‘The letter—’ Rachaela said again.

‘Don’t concern yourself with the letter now. Now you’re here, among us. We are your family, Rachaela.’

The servant entered and went to the tray, and they attended on him in silence.

In the sparkling firelight he brought to the old man a small slender glass of blackness and to the woman a thimble of garnet.

‘We shall dine soon,’ said Stephan.

Michael bowed, there could be no question of his gesture, bowed, and left them.

‘I hope you will like the dinner,’ said Anna. ‘We eat very simply. We live off the land.’

She crossed to a chair and sat down. The old man continued to stand but when Rachaela seated herself to allow him to sit also, he did not do so. He went to a dusty table where a chessboard was laid out with onyx figures. He moved one carefully and stepped away.

‘I must ask you,’ said Rachaela, ‘why I was invited. You pursued me. Why do you want me here?’

‘But naturally we want you. Not only Stephan and I. The others. It’s good that you take your place among us.’ Anna was unruffled.

‘There are many of us,’ said Stephan. ‘We agreed.’

‘Each of you agreed that I must—that I must come here?’

‘Of course.’

‘We’ve waited several years. Until the right time.’

‘Why,’ said Rachaela, ‘is it the right time now?’

Anna said, light as gossamer, ‘There is a proper time for everything. Knowing it is the art.’

‘Miriam and Eric, George and Peter, Sylvian perhaps, they would have had you here far sooner,’ said Stephan.

Rachaela recoiled at the pure numerical addition. Were there so many of them, the tribe of the Scarabae?

‘But the time was always wrong,’ said Anna. ‘Now the moment has arrived.’

She swallowed what was in her thimble, the garnet, in one stiletto gulp. She rose, and began to walk across the room towards a door curtain. Stephan said, ‘We are going to dine.’ And hastened ahead of her to whirl the curtain away and pull wide the door.