‘That’s where you all are so wonderful,’ said Mrs Kerr, with the deep thoughtfulness she brought to bear on his every remark. ‘Of course, I do date hopelessly, as Sydney says.’

‘Sydney? Oh, the girl, yes. Was she asked?’

‘Ronald, you’re unkind. Don’t say “gurl” like that. I thought you’d like her; she’s immensely clever.’

Ronald was surprised to realize that the fact that he did not like Sydney, of which he was himself only now aware, must long have been obvious to his mother. ‘If she were not a “gurl”, she wouldn’t be here. Anyway, isn’t she rather unnatural? The young Lawrences have at least a certain crude attractiveness.’

‘She’s been crude enough to care for me.’

‘I thought you couldn’t tolerate schärmerie.’

‘Oh, but that suggests the backfisch. Could one be ungenerous enough not to take what is offered one finely? Don’t be tiresome to her; do justify yourself. She’s prepared to find you rather tiresome.’

‘Was she asked?’

‘She thinks twenty is a tiresome age. She’s twenty-two, you see. Anyway, don’t let’s bother about her now. This “respect” that I’ve just discovered and you’ve authorized is so very comfortable to me. It does please me so – you may have felt this, but I haven’t put it into words because these large admissions are embarrassing – that you’ve come down to me from Germany, given up Germany. I hope it didn’t cost a lot?’

Ronald looked embarrassed.

‘I meant in development. Pictures. Music.’

‘Oh, those, no. Anyway, Mother, as I should have explained’ (an irritated consciousness of having already done so at great length brought a note into his voice) ‘those were purely secondary ——’

‘Of course they were. How dense I’ve been again, I mean: the Rentenmark.’ She laid a hand on his knee, leaned back her head against the wall and, he believed, even blushed her contrition; yet this was all said with such a vivid disclosure, such a flash of her personality, that he was overwhelmed. In spite of a convinced Femininism which should have armoured him, Ronald never failed to be overwhelmed by sheer femininity. Not since little boyhood did he remember such flashes from her; she had seemed for those middle years rather withdrawn and perverse; in her very elegance, abstract.

He stuttered his reasons for coming from Germany, sadly abashed. He told her how she had distracted him by a letter now and then, or a memory, from his regard of the economic confusion upon which he had so admirably concentrated himself. Her reprehensible undistress had been a constant temptation. Also he had not been able to see when else in the press of the next two years he could be with her for long. Also, he admitted scrupulously, it did happen to fit in very well with his project of meeting the Byngs in Sicily.