Elyot Standish realized that he felt tired. He touched a cold sweat-band inside his hat. He listened to the chisel and the knocking of a mallet. He felt still the irrelevance of his errand beside the pure satisfaction of sitting silent in Crick’s workshop.

I’ve come to ask Julia where she’s put some medicine of my mother’s. They tell me she’s out at the pictures, he said.

Yes, said Joe. She’ll be back soon.

Of course. There was no move that was not logical, assured in Joe Barnett’s voice. In the dusk he was a steady zone of reassurance.

In the light that he switched on, they leapt up at each other, their faces, smiling at each other to discover perhaps an unexpected feature. Joe Barnett and Elyot Standish faced each other across the shavings. Their glances were approving, if exploratory. It was natural enough, accepting each other for so long.

Well, well, said Joe. It’s sort of funny.

It was, Elyot agreed.

It was funny, it was satisfying. Like arriving from abroad after a long time. Everything was all right then, you felt, looking at Joe Barnett, you approved the short, cropped hair and, rising from the shirt, the solid tower of an uncovered neck. There was no hurry. Soon you would begin to say the many things that waited. But you liked to enjoy the waiting, to taste a presence.

I’m a little bit late, Joe, said Eden.

She waited in the doorway, in the first glance that accepted only Joe Barnett. The whole of Eden Standish concentrated in that glance. Beyond the arc of this, Elyot, the objects in the room did not exist, were excluded from the moment that she made for Joe Barnett and herself.

Oh, she said, quickly.

It had broken in on her consciousness. It was like flashing a torch on the face of someone in the dark. Her face was still moving with the emotions she had hoped secret. She could not forgive Elyot, any explanation that he might give, after the confession of her unguarded face. So he made no offer. He accepted the full pressure of her hatred.

10

Adelaide Blenkinsop drifted in her dining-room. On evenings that were less acute, with people one might be expected to know, or even minor royalty, she left it to Varcoe with an easy conscience. But on the evenings when, in Gerald’s words, Adelaide cut her throat in an interesting way, she brought her own mind, in a series of uneasy little hints and queries, and offered it up on the Empire table half an hour at least before the actual operation. This, to Adelaide, was the most delightful and excruciating moment. Because, for one thing, her mind was a blur. All the clever remarks she hoped, but knew she wouldn’t make in the course of the evening, all the little tags that she had dutifully prepared, were dispersed in this blur that was her mind, or table, the swooning of glass and silver, the reflected, artificial-looking roses, still fresh from an artificial dew. So Adelaide floated in despair. In and out of words she went, they were the words of Varcoe, that ought to and ordinarily did console. The words of butlers, Adelaide often felt, have a firm, if respectful hold on life that nobody else achieves. There is a security in the form of butlers, black and caparisoned. She remembered days driving with her grandmother. She remembered the black, smooth rump of a horse, a suggestion of brass, the ease and security of these, outside and yet part of the security of a brougham.