After the Mayor, Wyndham Farrar spoke. He spoke slyly, or so it seemed to me, concealing rather than revealing what he really had to say. He spoke in general about the theatre in the provinces, and about the National Theatre; then he spoke about Mrs. Von Blerke and local benefactors. He did not make a single original remark, and he spoke for ten minutes. I was disappointed. I do not know what I had been expecting him to say. No enthusiasm could have touched me, myself so unenthusiastic, so had I absurdly been expecting some giveaway sceptical stroke that would have matched my own doubts? Certainly, even though he said nothing to encourage me, I had a sense that his own interests could not be either as philanthropic or as naive as they appeared. His very manner promised duplicity. Or perhaps it was the myth of his greatness that had touched me: I was unwilling to admit that this man, who was, they said, different, could be exactly the same; although it is true that in the theatre ideas of greatness are never tested against any very hard or trying standard, and he might well have been another of those who had simply, with an accidental success, a little luck and a few shoddy notions, got by, so that I responded to his name with the respect that I usually reserve for those of more solid achievement, for Angus Wilson, for Dr. Leavis and those others who have really done real things.

When he finished speaking, everyone clapped and started to wander around again. I made my way back to the kitchen door for another drink, where I met an old lady who had been on the stage for years and who had clearly found out from experience what I had found out from reason, for she was the only person there who seemed really merry. She winked at me as the butler emerged with another tray, and we deftly helped ourselves; she then made off for the mushroom patties, and I started to look, as I always start to look, for interesting young men. The sad truth was that there was nobody: there were no young men at all except for the actors, and half of them were queer. The handsomest man there was my husband. This discovery did not fill me with pride, but with a fearful restlessness. I did not want to think so ill of human nature, to think that David was the best there was. I watched him from a distance: he was talking to two young and I think unmarried women. I could hear what they were saying: they were saying that they hoped things would liven up a bit now the theatre had come. Then one of them said that she liked David’s tie, and started to finger it; he looked at her, and I could feel some imminent gesture.