Sydney, sitting quite still, remained blank for a moment and did not say anything. Then she got up and walked about the room, which, crowded up with the glare of the afternoon, now appeared to be much constricted. She did not even wonder as usual whether Mrs Kerr were waiting for her to speak or if she had forgotten her. She looked for some time at the ornaments on Mrs Kerr’s dressing-table, which had at one time, by their profusion, meaninglessness and evident air of being appreciated, ‘dated’ her friend for her inevitably. She glanced for a moment, but only as if to assure herself of its still being there, at the portrait of Ronald.

Ronald, for the delectation of some circle of friends as to whose extent and nature she had never speculated, had sat to one of those expensive photographers who specialize in portraits of men. A disposition of the prevalent shadows with one fierce escape of light on to the jaw and temple combined, with the Promethean glitter of an eyeball, to bring about an effect of fine ruggedness, of an elemental something curbed. Each copy of this photograph, a sepia matt, must have cost Ronald about a guinea. Sydney turned away from it impatiently. ‘Why on earth,’ she asked, ‘isn’t Ronald up at Oxford now?’

She had to wait for an answer until Mrs Kerr, having glanced back to an earlier page of the letter and smiled to herself over something, perhaps an inconsistency she had detected, folded up the thin sheets casually and let them slide from the sofa to the floor.

‘What did you say, Sydney? Ah yes, Oxford. He thought it would be better to travel for a time, you see, after leaving school. He wanted to expand again, he said, and he wished particularly, though I cannot think why, to spend a year in Germany. He would have preferred to go to Heidelberg, but his guardian wouldn’t hear of it, unfortunately. So he is going up to Oxford in the autumn, I believe.’

‘I suppose he won’t mind being older than the people in his year?’

‘l suppose not,’ said Mrs Kerr. ‘I should have thought it was a pity. However, I know very little about boys of that age. He will be twenty soon.’

‘An impossible age,’ said Sydney.

‘I suppose it really is,’ agreed Mrs Kerr.