‘Ah, Perry, dear boy!’ Marcus Knight said, raising his glass in salute. ‘I wondered if I should manage to have a word with you. Do forgive me,’ he said jollily to the group. ‘If I don’t fasten my hooks in him now he’ll escape me altogether.’ Somewhat, Peregrine thought, to her astonishment, Knight kissed Mrs Greenslade’s hand. ‘Lovely, lovely party,’ he said and moved away. Peregrine saw Mrs Greenslade open her eyes very widely for a fraction of a second at the personage. ‘We’re amusing her,’ he thought sourly.

‘Perry,’ Knight said, taking him by the elbow. ‘May we have a long, long talk about your wonderful play? And I mean that, dear boy. Your wonderful play.’

‘Thank you, Marco.’

‘Not here, of course,’ Knight said waving his disengaged hand, ‘not now. But soon. And, in the meantime, a thought.’

‘Oops!’ Peregrine thought. ‘Here we go.’

‘Just a thought. I throw it out for what it’s worth. Don’t you feel – and I’m speaking absolutely disinterestedly – don’t you feel that in your Act Two, dear Perry, you keep Will Shakespeare offstage for rather a long time? I mean, having built up that tremendous tension – ’

Peregrine listened to the celebrated voice and as he listened he looked at the really beautiful face with its noble brow and delicate bone structure. He watched the mouth and thought how markedly an exaggerated dip in the bow of the upper lip resembled that of the Droushout engraving and the so-called Grafton portrait. ‘I must put up with him,’ Peregrine thought. ‘He’s got the prestige, he’s got the looks and his voice is like no other voice. God give me strength.’

‘I’ll think very carefully about it, Marco,’ he said and he knew that Knight knew he was going to do nothing of the sort. Knight, in a grand seigneurial manner, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We shall agree,’ he cried, ‘like birds in their little nest.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Peregrine.

‘One other thing, dear boy, and this is in your private ear.’ He steered Peregrine by the elbow into a corridor leading off to the boxes. ‘I find with some surprise,’ he said, muting the exquisite voice, ‘that we are to have W. Hartly Grove in our company.’

‘I thought he read Mr W. H. quite well, didn’t you?’

‘I could scarcely bring myself to listen,’ said Knight.

‘Oh,’ Peregrine said coolly. ‘Why?’

‘My dear man, do you know anything at all about Mr Harry Grove?’