‘Grieg, now that’s a very interesting point,’ he said. He pointed at Froulish with his pipe. ‘What made you put a musician into a list composed otherwise of writers? You may think it’s only a small point’ (‘Not a point at all,’ from Gunning-Forbes) ‘but what we’re all interested in here, is how the minds of chaps like you work. Our own minds,’ he smiled again to indicate that they need not think he meant all their minds were as good as his, ‘work by the ordinary methods, travel by, I think I could say, the ordinary routes. But chaps like you seem to have discovered, er,’ he did not want to say short cuts, it sounded too trite, so ended, ‘short-circuits.’ Hell, that was wrong. Short-circuits was wrong.

Froulish told Charles afterwards that he been on the point of replying, ‘I refer, of course, to Aloysius Grieg, the seventeenth-century Abbot of Helsingfors, author of the Tractatus Virorum et Angelorum, and particularly to the spurious third book,’ but in fact, he contented himself with saying stiffly, ‘Of course, I didn’t expect everyone to pick that point up, though I expect most people would see it all right. I mean, of course, Grieg’s tone colours, and particularly his handling of the wood-wind. I regard the vowels “e” and “u” as the wood-winds of the verbal or­chestra, and an accurate count would reveal, as you doubtless noticed, that they predominate over the rest in what I might call the slow movements of my work.’

Hutchins summoned all his dwindling reserves. June Veeber was looking at him in a way that did not help much.

‘Well, no, I can’t say I did notice,’ he said, jolly and aggressive, the manner of the don when he tells you he does not understand something so as to convey that he thinks you a fool for pretending you do, ‘you chaps do tend to give the rest of us credit for per­ceptions about your work that we don’t, I think, always have.’ He looked round the room for support, but they stared at him stonily; the discussion had gone on too long. ‘Was that, for instance, the bit you read us just now—was that a slow move­ment?’

‘No,’ said Froulish calmly. ‘It was a cadenza.’

Meeting Hutchins’s bewildered gaze, he stared at him trium­phantly, at the same time taking out a pocket comb and running it through his hair. A shower of dandruff was plainly visible under the electric light.

June Veeber rose. She was determined, evidently, to end the proceedings before the society should be permanently crippled. Besides, she wanted to get George Hutchins by himself and give him a few remarks on making a fool of himself in public. June’s young men were kept up to the mark.