“Almost? My dear fellow, if there were not this nasty doubt of living to enjoy it, I could justly correct that to entirely. That, in fact, would be the lesser of my corrections. I understand your suspicion—indeed the exposition of your thought was interesting—if rather in the Pharisee line—”

“What?”

“I mean, in your attitude to the Princess. You condemn—but how would you have come through the Revolution in her place? Is it possible to feel no pity for her undoubtedly deranged mind?”

“Is it possible to feel none for its victim?” Brett meant to say this louder than in fact it came out.

“Well, well—we each defend our own generation. For I think, despite the differences wrought by character and environment, that you and Ivan Karukhin are much of an age?”

“He’s five months younger. Oh, damn! I didn’t mean to say he. Ivan—”

Brett broke off what he was going to say. He was aware of change; as when a sauce, stirred for long minutes over a slow heat, all at once starts to thicken. The pace of the car was slower than it had yet been, and paradoxically it was this slackening which told him that events were speeding to a crisis. The car had reached a tiny hamlet, no more than a cluster of cottages breaking the monotony of the whitened hedges, and left, between them, it turned off the road into a narrow, ill-surfaced lane.

“What do you think?” whispered Majendie. “Should we make a move, at any stage, an attempt to get clear? Because, you see, I’ve been following our course—and I’m afraid we’re heading for nothing but the Stour.”

To his annoyance, Brett began to tremble. He knew it was due to relief and exhaustion, but that only infuriated him the more.

“Turned north before Ash,” Majendie was going on, “never a sight of it. Now we’ve swung left. Difficult to judge speed and time, but if we’d kept on the main road through Ash we should have been at Sandwich long past. I’m sure of that. I say—do you see? He’s put out the lights.”

Brett did see. They had driven through a gap in a hedge, where a gate either stood open or was gone, and had stopped short beyond it. There was now only a low bank to their left. On the right, level whitish land stretched without a break until it melted into darkness.

“There’s the other car!” exclaimed Majendie. “Rear lights about twenty yards ahead—and I say! There’s a man coming towards us.”

As he spoke, their driver got out, leaving his door open.

“Nothing,” said Brett quickly. “Do nothing, say nothing. Leave it to me. Here they come—and won’t they be pleased!”

The door beside him opened. He saw that the second man was not Geoffrey, so presumably Tim. For a couple of seconds the two men gaped, silent and aghast, at the empty seat beside Ivan. Then the driver began to swear.