‘Ought I,’ she asked, ‘to nip downstairs and thank him? One never quite knows with that sort of person.’

Richard kissed her hand. ‘Octavius,’ he said, ‘is not that sort of person, darling. Do nip down: he’ll be enchanted. And Mary –’

‘What, my treasure?’

‘I thought perhaps you might be terribly kind and ask them for a drink. If you find them pleasant, that is.’

She sat at her dressing-table and examined her face in the glass. ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I really like that new eyeshade.’ She took up a heavy Venetian glass scent spray and used it lavishly. ‘I hope someone gives me some really superlative scent,’ she said. ‘This is almost gone.’ She put it down. ‘For a drink?’ she said. ‘When? Not today, of course.’

‘Not today, you think?’

She opened her eyes very wide. ‘My dear, we’d only embarrass them.’

‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘See how you feel about it.’

She turned back to the glass and said nothing. He opened his dispatch-case and took out his typescript.

‘I’ve brought something,’ he said, ‘for you to read. It’s a surprise, Mary.’ He laid it on the dressing-table. ‘There.’

She looked at the cover-page. ‘Husbandry in Heaven. A play by Richard Dakers.’

‘Dicky? Dicky, darling, what is all this?’

‘Something I’ve kept for today,’ he said and knew at once that he’d made a mistake. She gave him that special luminous gaze that meant she was deeply moved. ‘Oh Dicky! ‘ she whispered. ‘For me? My dear!’

He was panic-stricken.

‘But when?’ she asked him, slowly shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘When did you do it? With all the other work? I don’t understand. I’m flabbergasted. Dicky!’

‘I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s – it’s quite a different thing. Not a comedy. You may hate it.’

‘Is it the great one – at last?’ she whispered. ‘The one that we always knew would happen? And all by yourself, Dicky? Not even with poor stupid, old, loving me to listen?’

She was saying all the things he would least have chosen for her to say. It was appalling.

‘For all I know,’ he said, ‘it may be frighteningly bad. I’ve got to that state where one just can’t tell. Anyway, don’t let’s burden the great day with it.’

‘You couldn’t have given me anything else that would make me half so happy.’ She stroked the typescript with both eloquent, not very young hands. ‘I’ll shut myself away for an hour before lunch and wolf it up.’

‘Mary,’ he said desperately. ‘Don’t be so sanguine about it. It’s not your sort of play.’

‘I won’t hear a word against it. You’ve written it for me, darling.’