‘My root is beautiful. Beautiful!’ shouted Fuchsia. ‘Do not talk about my things. I hate you for talking about my things. Don’t look at them.’ She ran to the twisted and candle-lit root of smooth wood in the wavering darkness and stood between it and the window where he was.

Steerpike took out his little pipe from his pocket and sucked the stem. She was a strange fish, he thought, and needed carefully selected bait.

‘How did you get to my room?’ said Fuchsia huskily.

‘I climbed,’ said Steerpike. ‘I climbed up the ivy to your room. I have been climbing all day.’

‘Go away from the window,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Go away to the door.’

Steerpike, surprised, obeyed her. But his hands were in his pockets. He felt more sure of his ground.

Fuchsia moved gauchely to the window taking up the candle as she passed the table, and peering over the sill, held the shaking flame above the abyss. The drop, which she remembered so well by daylight, looked even more terrifying now.

She turned towards the room. ‘You must be a good climber,’ she said sullenly but with a touch of admiration in her voice which Steerpike did not fail to detect.

‘I am,’ said Steerpike. ‘But I can’t bear my face like this any longer. Let me have some water. Let me wash my face, your Ladyship; and then if I can’t stay here, tell me where I can go and sleep, I haven’t had a cat’s nap. I am tired; but the stone field haunts me. I must go there again after I’ve rested.’

There was a silence.

‘You’ve got kitchen clothes on,’ said Fuchsia flatly.

‘Yes,’ said Steerpike. ‘But I’m going to change them. It’s the kitchen I escaped from. I detested it. I want to be free. I shall never go back.’

‘Are you an adventurer?’ said Fuchsia, who, although she did not think he looked like one, had been more than impressed by his climb and by the flow of his words.

‘I am,’ said Steerpike. ‘That’s just what I am. But at the moment I want some water and soap.’

There was no water in the attic, but the idea of taking him down to her bedroom where he could wash and then go away for food, rankled in her, for he would pass through her other attic rooms. Then she realized that he had, in any event, to leave her sanctum and, saving for a return climb down the ivy the only path lay through the attics and down the spiral staircase to her bedroom. Added to this was the thought that if she took him down now he would see very little of her rooms in the darkness, whereas tomorrow her attic would be exposed.