‘Well,’ said Joan, ‘you haven’t got to do anything that matters. I mean, there’s nobody but yourself to please and, of course, your wife. While a young man, like – well, oh, anyone – say Victor Ammering, has got the whole beastly thing ahead of him. I suppose it won’t all be beastly; I mean, he’ll fall in love and, I suppose, marry, and sooner or later his father’ll die and then he’ll have some money of his own; but in the long run it’s all rather an effort.’

‘He’s not ambitious?’

‘Oh no,’ said Joan placidly, ‘he isn’t a bit that kind of man. Besides, what’s the good of being ambitious? there may be another war. And even it there isn’t, disappointed people are dreadful to live with.’

‘Why are you so cynical?’ asked Colonel Duperrier.

‘But I’m not,’ said Joan, and smiled at him with troubled but naive blue eyes.

As she spoke, three people in mackintoshes, two women and a man, came in rustling and dripping from the porch. Their collars were turned up and over these they looked repudiatingly at one another. They had not been for their walks together, and they did not wish anybody to suppose that they had. They had followed one another for some kilometres along a streaming road, to close up unavoidably on the Hotel doorstep. Among them was James Milton, wondering why he had ever come abroad, cold, weary, amazed by the weather. Dripping audibly, they all got into the lift and slammed the gates upon their undesired contiguity. Here they remained for some moments shut up in silence.

‘I’m afraid it’s out of order,’ shouted Colonel Duperrier at the risk of appearing officious. Joan had looked on with detachment.

James Milton, only too glad to escape, let himself out at once and walked upstairs, after a wistful, inquiring glance in Joan’s direction. Numbed beyond the point of geniality, not one of his fellow-visitors had spoken to him during the day; he realized that this was the third Lawrence whom he did not know and that she was not going to speak to him either. Joan watched him critically till he had disappeared round the turn of the stairs.

‘That’s the parson,’ said she. ‘He went with them yesterday, with the Lee-Mittisons’ picnic.’

‘Oh yes, the Lee-Mittisons’ picnic. We saw them start off. Wasn’t it rather a fiasco?’