Mr Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over high cheek bones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weather-beaten. An out of door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless—and yet …

He thought: ‘There should be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn’t. That’s what’s all wrong. Yes, all wrong.’ And to Claude Wickam he said: ‘I beg your pardon? You were saying?’

Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. ‘Russia,’ he said, ‘that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. Magnificent!’ He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate éclair he was waving about in the other. ‘Take,’ he said (with his mouth full), ‘the Russian Ballet.’ Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did she think of the Russian Ballet?

The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point—what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet, but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride.

‘I have never seen it.’

‘What?’ He gazed at her open-mouthed. ‘But—surely—’

Her voice went on, level and emotionless.

‘Before my marriage, I was a dancer. So now—’

‘A busman’s holiday,’ said her husband.

‘Dancing.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me.’

‘Oh!’

It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb. His voice went on.

‘Talking of lives,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘and experimenting in them. The Russian nation made one costly experiment.’

Claude Wickam swung round on him.

‘I know what you are going to say,’ he cried. ‘Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?’

‘Three times,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall—not forget it.’

He spoke in an almost reverent voice.

‘I saw her, too,’ said Claude Wickam. ‘I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it.’

He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.

‘There is a statuette of her in a museum in Berlin,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It is marvellous. That impression of fragility—as though you could break her with a flip of the thumb nail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph.’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution.’

‘Fools! Madmen! Apes!’ said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.

‘I studied with Kharsanova,’ said Mrs Denman. ‘I remember her well.’

‘She was wonderful?’ said Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Denman quietly. ‘She was wonderful.’