For the greater part of the first act he was alone, having, as he had explained in the office, no masochistic itch to invite a guest to a Roman holiday where he himself was the major sacrifice. Towards the end of the act, however, Bob Grantley came into the box and stood behind him. Grantley’s attention was divided. Sometimes he looked down through beams of spot-lights at the stalls, cobbled with heads, sometimes at the stage and sometimes, sideways and with caution, at the doctor himself. Really, Grantley thought, he was quite uncomfortably motionless. One couldn’t tell what he was thinking and one hesitated, the Lord knew, to ask him.

Down on the stage Clark Bennington and Parry Percival and J.G. Darcey had opened the long crescendo leading to Helena’s entrance. Grantley thought suddenly how vividly an actor’s nature could be exposed on the stage: there was for instance a kind of bed-rock niceness about old J.G., a youthful-ness of spirit that declaimed itself through the superimposed make-up, the characterization and J.G.’s indisputable middle-age. And Bennington? And Percival? Grantley had begun to consider them in these terms when Percival, speaking one of his colourless lines, turned down-stage. Bennington moved centre, looked at Darcey and neatly sketched a parody of Percival’s somewhat finicking movement. The theatre was filled with laughter. Percival turned quickly, Bennington smiled innocently at him, prolonging the laugh.

Grantley looked apprehensively at the doctor.

‘Is that new?’ he ventured in a whisper. ‘That business?’

The doctor didn’t answer and Grantley wondered if he only imagined that the great hands on the balustrade had closed more tightly over each other.

Helena Hamilton came on to a storm of applause and with her entrance the action was roused to a new excitement and was intensified with every word she uttered. The theatre grew warm with her presence and with a sense of heightened surprise.

‘Now they’re all on,’ Grantley thought, ‘except Adam and the girl.’

He drew a chair forward stealthily and sat behind Rutherford.

‘It’s going enormously,’ he murmured to the massive shoulder. ‘Terrific, old boy.’ And because he was nervous he added: ‘This brings the girl on, doesn’t it?’

For the first time, the doctor spoke. His lips scarcely moved. A submerged voice uttered within him. ‘Hence,’ it said, ‘heap of wrath, foul indigested lump.’

‘Sorry, old boy,’ whispered Grantley and began to wonder what hope in hell there was of persuading the distinguished author to have a drink in the office during the interval with a hand-picked number of important persons.

He was still preoccupied with this problem when a side door in the set opened and a dark girl with short hair walked out on the stage.

Grantley joined in the kindly applause. The doctor remained immovable.