Eden scatters herself in little bits. For other people to pick up, said Mrs Standish, hoping she had made a mot.

Eden doesn’t come near me any more, Adelaide complained.

Nothing can be so galling as the superior economic position. Adelaide constantly felt this. She made excuses for herself, she made concessions to other people, like putting on slightly shabby clothes to come to Ebury Street. She was the interloper, a delicious tingle of discomfort and regret.

When Adelaide said that in a couple of weeks they were going to Cannes, she felt bound to reduce what might be taken for enthusiasm. Of course it was a bore, she said, but Gerald –

Yes, said Mrs Standish, accepting the modification, though impressed. I don’t regret my lack of independence one bit. I never learned to absorb till I was forced to sit in a room. Connie, tea? I mean, one loses contact, one loses contact with the substance of things.

Shaping phrases, pouring tea, it made her want to flourish the pot, it made her look at Adelaide, as much as to say: Adelaide, there, if you don’t ask me to your dinners, the loss is yours. Essentially superior, benevolent, even spirituelle, Mrs Standish handed tea. Also the watercress sandwiches. She handed them as if she were doing a favour, as if they were a material element of the ritual by which the favoured made communion with her mind.

No, thank you, Mrs Standish, said Connie Tiarks.

It was her throat, refusing food, the pulse that must be visible, at least to the eye of Muriel Raphael. Often when scared or miserable Connie Tiarks was ashamed for the palpitation of her flesh. It was time she threw in a word to Muriel Raphael, the friend of Elyot’s, Mrs Standish said. The hands of Elyot’s friend had the cool, well-defined look of the hands of women who do expensive things. Bracelets jostled in metallic impact when she moved. Now, said Connie, now, I shall say some, some, what. She sat there feeling herself overflow, her stupidity, dumbness, into the room. Evenings, she hung her stockings to dry in front of the gas fire. It came to her now, always in a full room, a frantic nostalgia for the unalarming acts, the tangible things, the smell of yellow soap as she washed her hands in a scullery, the mud that grated from her shoes on to an iron mat.

Sometimes Connie Tiarks felt she could only talk about the films.

Have you seen –? she began, dreading her own quaver, it was like a party dress, and awkward moments at country dances, you held Garbo between yourself and silence.

What was that?

Elyot’s friend jerked, an awareness of bracelets, and was it violets, swept in a wave of terror on to Connie Tiarks.

Elyot will come down soon, said Connie.

It came keeling over with the wave, anything, anything, she was leading her own rescue party.

He works in the afternoon, she said. I always wonder how one does, I mean, not exactly work, I mean, turn it on. Inspiration can’t just happen like a tap.