‘Listen,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the Walküre. ‘That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two.’

‘Which two?’

‘Prince Oranoff and Mrs Denman. Don’t you see the difference in her tonight? It’s as though—as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘Perhaps so.’

‘The same old drama,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams … One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now—what is he, after all? A good fellow—prosperous, successful—but—well, mediocre, good honest English stuff—very much like that Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English—and as ordinary—as that pretty English girl with her fresh untrained voice. Oh, you may smile, Mr Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying.’

‘I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet—’

‘Yet what?’

Mr Quin leaned forward. His dark melancholy eyes searched for those of Mr Satterthwaite.

‘Have you learned so little of life?’ he breathed.

He left Mr Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway he saw a couple enlaced in each other’s arms.

For a moment he thought—

And then he saw. John Denman and Molly Stanwell. Denman’s voice came to him, hoarse and anguished.

‘I can’t live without you. What are we to do?’

Mr Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen.

Mr Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been.

Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight. He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t leave me.’