Nobody was quite sure how much of a ‘send-off’, under the circumstances, Milton would appreciate, but it was impossible to let pass such an excellent opportunity of embarrassing Ronald. Ronald was better liked than anybody else in the Hotel had been for a long time; it was always easy to be amusing about him; he roused genuine interest and curiosity, and, in the breasts of those who disliked his mother, an active instinct to protect and comfort. In twos and threes for mutual encouragement people were never tired of seeking him out and baiting him, giving him articles in the Morning Post to read, tripping him up over statistics or twitting him on an attachment to one or other of the Lawrences. He was the dearest boy, good humour itself, and one could not doubt that he genuinely enjoyed all this. The present prospect of seeing him shake hands all round, reply to a dozen mock-tender addresses and blushingly double his long legs under the low seat of the shandrydan kept tennis players from courts booked a week ago, wives from buying their husband’s tea and walkers down from the hills.

After the luggage had been arranged there was an interval, then Milton took form in the gloom of the lounge and appeared in the doorway, drew half back, glanced at his watch and hesitated, smiling uncertainly. In spite of a very secular grey squash hat he looked for the first time true to type, and several people realized sharply that a Church of England clergyman had for weeks been among them. The professional aspect stamped out the lover: he was once more approachable, showed up even as dedicated to approachability. There was a movement towards him. Friends gained all in a moment smiled for him up at the unflecked sky and congratulated him on his weather, intimates taking him up from before the dawn of that interlude regretted his going away loudly, and turned in anguish to one another with appeals to regret more. He nodded round with successive, finished-off little smiles and once or twice visibly swallowed. Miss Pym, standing down at the foot of the steps said to herself, ‘Morituri te salutant’.

People on the verge of departure always seemed to her to be saying this; there was something about them fated and sacrificial that made her feel self-conscious on their behalf yet somehow rather exalted. Presently Milton thought of something, murmured, and turned back into the lounge. The curtain having dropped for a minute with the usual good effect of tightening them up to further expectancy they all turned to one another again and said in low voices what a real pity it was that he should be going away. All sorts of things that he might have been to them appeared suddenly; with things they might have brought to his hearing for sympathy, taxed him with or asked him about.