‘Good morning, sir,’ Florence woodenly rejoined. Only when she was alone with her mistress did she allow herself the freedom of the dressing-room.

‘Did you,’ Miss Bellamy shouted from her bath, ‘ever see anything quite like it?’

‘But it’s delightful,’ he said, ‘and how very nice of Octavius.’

‘You don’t mean to say you know who he is?’

‘Octavius Browne? Of course I do. He’s the old boy down below in the Pegasus bookshop. Up at the House, but a bit before my time. Delightful fellow.’

‘Blow me down flat!’ Miss Bellamy ejaculated, splashing luxuriously. ‘You mean that dim little place with a fat cat in the window.’

‘That’s it. He specializes in pre-Jacobean literature.’

‘Does that account for the allusion to wombs and conceptions? Of what can he be thinking, poor Mr Browne?’

‘It’s a quotation,’ Charles said, letting his eyeglass drop. ‘From Spenser. I bought a very nice Spenser from him last week. No doubt he supposes you’ve read it.’

‘Then, of course, I must pretend I have. I shall call on him and thank him. Kind Mr Browne!’

‘They’re great friends of Richard’s.’

Miss Bellamy’s voice sharpened a little. ‘Who? They?’

‘Octavius Browne and his niece. A good-looking girl.’ Charles glanced at Florence and after a moment’s hesitation added: ‘She’s called Anelida Lee.’

Florence cleared her throat.

‘Not true!’ The voice in the bathroom gave a little laugh. ‘A-nelly-da! It sounds like a face cream.’

‘It’s Chaucerian.’

‘I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.’

‘No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.’

‘I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.’

Charles said: ‘She’s on the stage, it appears.’

‘Oh, God!’

‘In that new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.’

‘You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.’ Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently: ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?’

‘I meet him there occasionally,’ Charles said, and added lightly, ‘I’m thick with them too, Mary.’

There was a further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted: ‘Florrie! Bring me you know what.’

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absentmindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled ‘Slaypest’ and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.