What I was trying to get them to see was that that was precisely what Hardy had done in the novel they had all paid £125 for the week to come and study. (That included, by the way, accommodation and breakfast and three of Camilla’s packed lunches, as well as tuition fees and a free flower press as a souvenir.) ‘Don’t forget,’ I reminded them, ‘that Elfride Swancourt is an amalgam of the essential qualities and circumstances of Tryphena and Emma Lavinia – the woman Hardy had met almost on this very spot, when he came down here to work on the church which I believe Camilla is going to take you all to see tomorrow. The name Elfride, you will notice, doffs its hat ceremoniously to the new love – Emma Lavinia – while not turning its back too brutally on the old – Tryphena. Now it’s no more certain that Hardy ever got around to introducing Moule to Emma Lavinia than that he allowed him to touch fingers with Tryphena, but with the invention of Elfride he was able to introduce him at a stroke, and as a rival lover, to them both. “Horace, Elfride. Elfride, this is Horace. Horace is the person I’ve been telling both you girls so much about.”’

I paused and wondered what to do about the couple at the back who were taking notes again. I could see someone else looking troubled, leafing furiously through the novel in search of a character called Horace. And others, I could feel, were waiting for me to get on to the wild flowers and the local customs and, if I really had to, the question of indifferent fate.