Richard, shaken, turned aside to get it. As he made his way back to Gantry he was aware of one of those unaccountable lulls that sometimes fall across the insistent din of a cocktail party. Gantry, inches taller than anyone else in the room, was looking across the other guests towards the door. Several of them also had turned in the same direction, so that it was past the backs of heads and through a gap between shoulders that Richard first saw Anelida and Octavius come in.

It was not until a long time afterwards that he realized his first reaction had been one of simple gratitude to Anelida for being, in addition to everything else, so very beautiful.

He heard Timon Gantry say: ‘Monty! Look.’ Montague Marchant had come up to them.

‘I am looking,’ he said. ‘Hard.’

And indeed they all three looked so hard at Anelida that none of them saw the smile dry out on Mary Bellamy’s face and then reappear as if it had been forcibly stamped there.

Anelida shook hands with her hostess, expected, perhaps, some brief return of the morning’s excessive cordiality, heard a voice say: ‘So kind of you to come,’ and witnessed the phenomenon of the triangular smile. Followed by Octavius she moved on to Charles. And then she was face to face with Richard who, as quickly as he could, had made his way down the room to meet them.

‘Well?’ Timon Gantry said.

‘Well,’ Marchant repeated. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s an actress.’

‘Any good?’

‘I’ll answer that one,’ Gantry said, ‘a little later.’

‘Are you up to something?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, for God’s sake?’

‘Patience, patience.’

‘I sometimes wonder, Timmy, why we put up with you.’

‘You needn’t. You put up with me, dear boy, because I give The Management its particular brand of prestige.’

‘So you say.’

‘True?’

‘I won’t afford you the ignoble satisfaction of saying so.’

‘All the same, to oblige me, stay where you are.’

He moved towards the group of three that was slowly making its way down the drawing-room.

Marchant continued to look at Anelida.

When Richard met Anelida and took her hand he found, to his astonishment, he was unable to say to her any of the things that for the last ten years he had so readily said to lovely ladies at parties. The usual procedure would have been to kiss her neatly on the cheek, tell her she looked marvellous and then pilot her by the elbow about the room. If she was his lady of the moment, he would contrive to spend a good deal of time in her company and they would probably dine somewhere after the party. How the evening then proceeded would depend upon a number of circumstances, none of which seemed to be entirely appropriate to Anelida. Richard felt, unexpectedly, that his nine years seniority were more like nineteen.