Anelida said, to her own astonishment: ‘But I do know I can act.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course you do. You’re a good actress.’

‘You haven’t seen me.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Richard!’

‘At least I’ve surprised you into calling me by name.’

‘But when did you see me?’

‘It slipped out. It’s part of a deep-laid plan. You’ll find out.’

‘When?’

‘At the party. I’m off, now. Au revoir, dear Anelida.’

When he had gone, Anelida sat perfectly still for quite a long time. She was bewildered, undecided and piercingly happy.

Richard, however, returned to the house with his mind made up. He went straight to Charles Templeton’s study. He found Charles and Maurice Warrender there, rather solemn over a decanter of sherry. When he came in they both looked self-conscious.

‘We were just talking about you,’ Charles said. ‘Have whatever it is you do have at this hour, Dicky. Lager?’

‘Please. I’ll get it. Should I make myself scarce so that you can go on talking about me?’

‘No, no.’

‘We’d finished,’ Warrender said, ‘I imagine. Hadn’t we, Charles?’

‘I suppose we had.’

Richard poured out his lager. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I sidled in with the idea of boring you with a few observations under that very heading.’

Warrender muttered something about taking himself off. ‘Not unless you have to, Maurice,’ Richard said. ‘It arises, in a way, out of what you said this morning.’ He sat down and stared at his beer mug. ‘This is going to be difficult,’ he said.

They waited, Warrender looking owlish, Charles, as always, politely attentive.

‘I suppose it’s a question of divided allegiances,’ Richard said at last. ‘Partly that, anyway.’ He went on, trying to put what he wanted to say as objectively as might be. He knew that he was floundering and almost at once began to regret his first impulse.

Charles kept turning his elderly freckled hand and looking at it. Warrender sipped his sherry and shot an occasional, almost furtive, glance at Richard.

Presently Charles said: ‘Couldn’t we come to the point?’

‘I wish I could,’ Richard rejoined. ‘I’m making a mess of this, I know.’

‘May I have a go at it? Is this what you’re trying to tell us? You think you can write a different kind of play from the sort of thing that suits Mary. You have, in fact, written one. You think it’s the best thing you’ve done but you’re afraid Mary won’t take kindly to the idea of your making a break. You’ve shown it to her and she’s reading it now. You’re afraid that she’ll take it for granted that you see her in the lead. Right, so far?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘But,’ Warrender demanded unexpectedly, ‘she won’t like this play, what!’

‘I don’t think she’ll like it.’