It was about this time that Connie Tiarks appeared, out of the blue, as she put it, with a cheerful aptitude for cliché. He went into the drawing-room to a face that he dragged up, almost out of the past, it would not quite fit itself to Connie Tiarks, in spite of her protesting that it did, producing the evidence of past events.

I expect this will be a surprise, said Connie, her hand held out stiffly, her voice a mingling of cheerfulness and doubt.

Connie passed you a remark, and it always limped upward, somehow questioning itself at the end. She laughed much too much, startling a silence, protecting her own inadequate remarks. She looked up at you hopefully out of a large and lumpy face.

When he asked her what she was doing, she said that she was passing through, which was not altogether surprising in Connie Tiarks. He remembered her chiefly as a creature of transit, an incident on a sofa, another under a mulberry tree. Connie Tiarks would always be this. Her hands were always on the verge of reaching for gloves.

Yes, she said. I’m on my way to Cheltenham.

Which struck a note that he recognized, the rushing of water from a cistern, that made him blush.

Of course, he said. Cheltenham. Yes.

We’ve lived there since, she said.

Yes, he said. Yes. I remember.

It’s nice for Mother, said Connie Tiarks, without explaining, except that with Connie most things were nice out of pure gratitude.

Mrs Tiarks lived in a boarding-house in Cheltenham. She had her annuity, which she supplemented by making bridge- and dressing-jackets for the less distressed gentlewomen she knew. Her anaemic fingers wandered mechanically over the surface of the stuffs she worked, fortunately without appreciating the inherent ugliness of these. She drew a certain mental comfort from her occupation. Surrounded by snippets of silk and brocade, she sat at her window, flat and bloodless, beside a pot of maidenhair.

Cheltenham was altogether pleasant, Connie said.

Elyot found it difficult to talk to her. He found himself looking at her face, it sat roundly on her large head, in a kind of scallop arrangement of hair.

There were lectures, she said, uneasily. And concerts. And archery in one of the parks.

But it was not so much Connie, it was all people, the words that came from mouths, people trying to communicate in words.

Had he read any good books? she asked, her voice growing brighter with desperation.

At sixteen she had begun to take an interest in literature and art. She had begun to expose the Dutch masters on her mantelpiece, and to copy passages from Whitman and Tagore into a leather notebook. Her mother wondered a little. But as it seemed a harmless and ladylike pursuit, Connie was allowed to persevere.

Isn’t it funny, our sitting here together after all this time? Connie was saying, Elyot heard.

A great deal was funny to Connie Tiarks, again perhaps from making the best, from continually supplying surprises to an otherwise unsurprising life.