The man in the white coat, acting from his obscure motives, duly sent his invitation, and Charles found himself walking down a suburban road one evening after duty. He was not looking forward to the gathering, but found himself, nowadays, bored and irritated by making excuses and evasions; it was simpler to go and be done with it. As he walked up the gravel path to the large, semi-detached house (‘Stockbroker’s Tudor’) where the man lived or lodged, he saw the lighted window on the first floor, and heard gruff laughter. Hearties. He had kept clear, during his college days, of the sporadic warfare between athlete and aesthete, but felt, looking back, that if he had disliked each party equally, it had, nevertheless, been for different reasons. He had distrusted the cooing, pink-shirted aesthetes because he perceived inside himself the germs of the same disease, and had been afraid of allowing the tendency any free play. The hearties he had simply disliked as one dislikes a foggy day or a bad smell. And here he was walking into a nest of them.

It was all exactly as he had known it would be. The featureless lounge, with imitation oak furniture and square-cut ‘comfy’ arm­chairs and sofa, was full of tall, erect young men and tweedy young women who all somehow echoed the same ersatz note as their surroundings. The landlady, a forty-ish blonde aspiring wildly to a chic slightly above her own level, the degree of chic repre­sented by the present company, was acting as hostess: the man whose name he did not know was evidently ‘more like a friend than a lodger’. The lady probably kept Cairn terriers, or a Labra­dor, but fortunately the creatures were out of sight at the moment.

No attempt was, of course, made at an introduction: Charles was launched into the company with a vague intimation that some of them knew him, carrying with it the implication that the others were the lucky ones. Beer was available, and he took a glass in his hand and prepared to wait out in patience the time he must endure before going home. But his calm resignation was suddenly disturbed. His ears picked up a familiar braying noise, and a broad back that had been turned towards him was abruptly reversed, becoming a broad chest. The same immature, arrogant face, the same cold eyes behind glasses. It was Burge, one of the medical set who had been at College with him, and possibly the only one of his contemporaries for whom he had ever felt a really vivid dislike.