Mary Lou put down her cup.

“Well—”

“No—not for a minute. Don’t go. I mean, why? Why Mr Halliday? Is he advancing lovelessness as a programme? For God’s sake!”

“No, Wilf. Mr Halliday is very fond of ladies.”

“Then I don’t see where I come in. Let’s leave the question. He probably picked me out of a reference book with a pin.”

“He did not, now! He read that book—”

“All We Like Sheep.”

“—and then he ordered all the others—”

“Majestic!”

“—then he sent his secretary to ask round. She asked the President of Astrakhan. You see Mr Halliday had already given them the ecumenical temple, the skijump and the snow machine and the courts for real tennis—”

“I quite see he had a pull. He interviewed Rick—”

“Like I said, Mr Barclay, it was his secretary. He avoids all human contact. At least—”

“Except for his collection of women. The old devil!”

“But he’s not old, Mr Barclay. Why, he’s no older than you are!”

Pause.

“He hasn’t written best-selling novels by any chance?”

“I don’t think so. No. I know so. But you can see it was a real break. I mean after Rick had done phonetics he decided to specialize in you—because he did like your books, Mr Barclay, he really did. Then Mr Halliday’s secretary communicated with the President of Astrakhan who asked Professor Saunders and there you are!”

“But a man as rich as that could afford more than one author—he could collect them like ladies!”

Mary Lou nodded. Then just when I thought my humiliation was complete she gave me a short list of other writers in whom Mr Halliday was interested. I had never read any of them.

I picked up Rick’s letter, looked at it then set it down again. Men without love. There was something in it. Mum, the father I never knew, Elizabeth, Emily. Admittedly the man in All We Like Sheep who had claimed to have no capacity for love was nothing but a character I had sketched in for plot purposes; but did he, after all, speak for me? I was sometimes lonely. But that was the loneliness of a man who wanted people about, the noise and shapes of people, a certain liveliness. I desired with lessening frequency the shape of a female body to use. Even this recognition of the exquisiteness of Mary Lou’s femininity was not in any way, I told myself, crude—it was partly paternal, protective, compassionate, sad.

She got to her feet.

“Well.”

“Must you go?”

I could have done something harmless and explanatory like taking her hand and kissing it. I could have used my rhetoric. Men without love! All this danger in less than twenty-four hours!

But she was guessing that yes, she must go and she was thanking me for the coffee, both of us having forgotten that she had brought it with her. After I had closed the door behind her I stood in the little lobby, staring at my empty cases where they lay on the appropriate stand. It was useless and fatuous. I must get away, now, not just from him but from her as well. To be limed by five feet a few inches of child, to be limed by nothing but a young body that supported a mind about as interesting as a piece of string!