Grant said with that air of disengagement that clung about him so persistently: ‘I understand it was thought that you might like to look round here under your own steam for a few minutes. We can meet again here, or if you prefer it up above in the atrium. I’ll stay here for ten minutes in case there’s anything you want to ask and then I’ll go and wait in the atrium. We’ll probably meet on the way and in any case you can’t get lost. There are “out” notices everywhere. I’m sure Mailer—’

He broke off. Somebody was approaching down the iron stairway.

‘Here he is,’ Grant said.

But it was only Kenneth Dorne.

He had sounded to be in a hurry and made a precipitate entry but when he came out of the shadows and saw the others he halted and slouched towards them. His camera dangled from his hand. It struck Sophy that he was, in some unsatisfactory way, assuaged and comforted.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Where’s my aunt?’

Grant informed him. He said ‘Oh dear!’ and giggled.

‘Hadn’t you better take a look at her?’ Major Sweet asked.

‘What?’

‘Your aunt. She’s up top. In the garden.’

‘May she flourish,’ Kenneth said, ‘like the Green Bay Tree. Dear Major.’

Major Sweet contemplated him for one or two seconds. ‘Words,’ he then said, ‘fail me.’

‘Well,’ Kenneth rejoined, ‘thank God for that.’

This produced a kind of verbal stalemate.

It was broken by the Van der Veghels. They had, they excitedly explained, hoped so much (ah, so much, interpolated the Baroness), that Mr Grant would be persuaded to read aloud the Mithraic passage from Simon in its inspirational environment. As everybody saw, they had brought their copy—was it too much, even, to ask for a signature?—to that end. They understood, none better, the celebrated Anglo-Saxon reticence. But after all, the terms of the brochure, not of course to be insisted upon au pied de la lettre, had encouraged them to believe…

They went on along these lines with a sort of antiphonal reproachfulness and Grant’s face, even in that dim light, could be seen to grow redder and redder. At last he turned helplessly to Sophy, who muttered, ‘Hadn’t you better?’ and was strangely gratified when he said at once and at large, ‘If you really want it, of course. I didn’t mean to be disobliging. It’s only that I’ll feel such an ass.’