‘I am sorry, that was horribly vulgar of me. It is so much easier to be vulgar and so much less noticed. I mean, you and I are supposed to assume, or to seem everywhere to assume, that that man down in the garden could be more to either of us than the other. Also, one has had it so ground into one that admiration, any exercise of the spirit, is only valuable to its object, to drive her, his, somebody’s mill.’

‘“Exercise of the spirit” …’ said Mrs Kerr, while Sydney listened like a stranger to this repetition of her own words. ‘If you call admiration that, you must agree that it would be allowed another value, even popularity: the value of a gymnastic.’

‘Oh. Shaw’s Englishman and his moral gymnasium; yes, I know,’ said Sydney scornfully.

‘Now, there you are, Sydney; you’ve moved and you’ll say I disturbed you. Don’t be so out to suffer. Mr Milton’s not the only person who runs on to spikes.’

‘“Out to suffer,”’ said Sydney, looking down at herself, as it were, from the height of her exaltation. ‘Am I out to suffer?’

‘I feel that you are,’ said Mrs Kerr, and pressing her head farther back into the cushions she looked at Sydney again in thoughtful silence. They could hear footsteps, perhaps James Milton’s, crunching the gravel below.

‘Well, yes,’ Mrs Kerr said, ‘put it that way … Sydney, isn’t that a letter for me, over there by the carnations? Isn’t it from Ronald?’

‘Yes, it is from Ronald. I brought it up with me, but I forgot to give it to you. Do you want it now?’ Mrs Kerr was holding out her hand for the letter, but Sydney did not seem to notice. ‘It’s a very fat letter; I expect it is his views on Germany. Do you want to read it while I’m here?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Kerr. ‘I think I ought to read it. Mothers do.’

‘That you know best, of course.’ Sydney, rising to her knees, reached across the table for the letter, which she handed to Ronald’s mother. Mrs Kerr put on what Sydney called ‘the Ronald expression’ and began to read, while Sydney watched her.

‘My little boy,’ she said at last, ‘is coming here.’

‘Coming here?’

‘Yes, here. Coming to the Hotel.’