‘He’s so easily hurt,’ continued Celia.

‘And what about you?’

‘Oh well … he can’t bear hurting me, poor dear, only he doesn’t always know when he is, you see.’

‘You aren’t in love with him, are you, for mercy’s sake?’

‘Oh no. But I’m very fond of him, poor dear. He’s very sweet, really. He’s got marvellous qualities, you know. He could be a very fine man.’

‘Well, he won’t be, if he isn’t careful. He talks too much and he reads too much and he doesn’t think.’

‘He’s always thinking!’

‘Not thinking. Only brooding. And he’s so fearfully intelligent he gives me a pain. There’s nothing more awful than a natural ass who’s read too much.’

Celia was uncomfortably convinced of the truth of some of these sweeping remarks and hastened to return to the object of them, who had pinned Francis into a corner and was slowly and ruthlessly extracting from him a history of the development of the French chalk trade in the British Isles during the last hundred years. Francis did not mind; he rather enjoyed showing how much he knew about his job.

Celia came and stood gracefully, in silence, by Capel’s shoulder. She felt so sorry for him! She, and she alone, knew how young, how bewildered and earnest he was beneath that hard heavy manner, and how remorselessly he submitted every emotion he experienced to the judgment of a not very good brain, which had been battered into a most peculiar state by the study of Lawrence, Gide, Hemingway, Spengler, Pound, Joyce, Eliot and other contemporary prophets.

For the first half of the evening the party had an intellectual cast which pleased Sophia; it was more like a salon, she thought, than a party.

Jane and George, who were married and whose youth only displayed itself in the awful seriousness of their minds, and whose cleverness only burst out harmlessly in difficult games with pencil and paper, played peacefully in a corner with Celia and Capel. Wiggins, who was a friend of Harry and Francis from Northgate, sat and wound the gramophone and played, at Sophia’s request, music by Haydn while he told her about a Rugby football match in which he had played a bold and decisive part and hurt himself considerably, much to his satisfaction. Francis, in the intervals of the Haydn, sang some of his little songs, accompanying himself on the ukulele and looking so earnest and wistful that Sophia and Celia decided that he must be in love at last and wondered who on earth it could be and hoped to heaven that she would not be too frightful. Everyone was quietly enjoying the party, even Capel, but there was a general feeling of anticipation and expectation in the air; and when, at nearly twelve o’clock, a car was heard coming down the road into the Vale there was a stir in the salon, and murmurs of ‘Here they are!’

Francis hurried the bottles of drink into a more noticeable position, Sophia (not without misgivings) brought out the remains of the Fish Paste sandwiches, which looked even less appetising now that they were lying languidly all over the dish.