Flora and Coomaraswami are offered drinks from a tray of drinks. They are joined in due course by the QUESTIONER.)

‘… and delicious snacks and conversation—darling, it’s so moving, they read the New Statesman and the TLS as if they were the Bible in parts, well, I don’t mean the Bible but you know what I mean, and they know who wrote what about whom; it’s like children with their faces jammed to the railings of an unattainable park. They ask me—’

QUESTIONER What is your opinion of Gertrude Stein, Miss Crewe?

FLORA Oh … yes, Gertrude Stein! ‘—and I can’t bring myself to say she’s a poisonous old baggage who’s travelling on a platform ticket …’

PIKE FC went to tea with Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas in Paris in 1922. The legend that Stein threw her out of the apartment because FC asked for the recipe of Miss Toklas’s chocolate cake cannot be trusted. FC did not like chocolate in any form.

FLORA ‘Then I met my painter …’

DAS Miss Crewe, may I congratulate you on your lecture. I found it most interesting!

FLORA Thank you … !

DAS I was surprised you did not mention Virginia Woolf.

FLORA I seldom do.

DAS Have you met George Bernard Shaw?

FLORA Yes. I was nearly in one of his plays once.

DAS But—you are not an actress … ?

FLORA No, that was the trouble.

DAS What do you think of Jummapur?

FLORA Well, I only arrived the day before yesterday but—

DAS Of course. How absurd of me!

FLORA Not at all. I was going to say that my first impression—

DAS Jummapur is not in any case to be compared with London. Do you live in Bloomsbury?

FLORA No, I live in Chelsea.

DAS Chelsea—of course! My favourite part of London!

FLORA Oh! You … ?

DAS I hope to visit London one of these days. The Chelsea of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood!—Rossetti lived in Cheen Walk! Holman Hunt lived in Old Church Street! ‘The Hireling Shepherd’ was painted in Old Church Street! What an inspiration it would be to me to visit Chelsea!

FLORA You are a painter!

DAS Yes! Nirad Das.

FLORA How do you do?

DAS I am top hole. Thank you. May I give you a present?

FLORA Oh …

DAS Please do not judge it too harshly, Miss Crewe …

FLORA Thank you!

DAS Of course, I work in oils, Winsor and Newton. If it would please you to sit for your portrait I would like to repay you for your superfine portrait-in-words of the rough-and-tumble of literary life in London.

FLORA Would you really?

DAS I would very much!

Das produces a small sketch pad and tears off a sheet. He gives it to her shyly.

FLORA ‘… and he gave me a pencil sketch of myself holding forth on the literary life.’

Flora retraces her steps with Coomaraswami.

PIKE She mentions a pencil sketch. Do you know what happened to it?