“Do you suppose—?” she ventured in a low voice.

“I hardly think water-wandering would present a very alluring prospect,” Mr Bard rejoined.

“In any case, they have no luggage.”

“They may not need any. They may bed down as they are.”

“Oh, do you think so? All those steel knobs.”

“There is that, of course,” Mr Bard agreed.

The young people lit cigarettes, inhaled deeply, stared at nothing and exhaled vapour. They had not spoken.

Miss Rickerby-Carrick gazed raptly at them and then wrote in her book.

“—two of our Young Independents,” she noted. “Is it to gladiators that one should compare them? Would they like it if one did? Would I be able to get on with them? Would they like me? Would they find me sympática or is it sympático? Alas, there I go again. Incorrigible, hopeless old Me!” She stabbed down an ejaculation mark, clicked off her pencil with an air of quizzical finality, and said to Troy: “How did you get here? I came by bus: from good old Brummers.”

“I drove,” Mr Bard said. “From London and put up at a pub. Got here last night.”

“I did too,” said Troy. “But I came by train.”

“There’s a London train that connects this morning,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick observed. “Arrives 10.45—”

“I know. But I—there was—I had an engagement,” Troy mumbled.

“Such as going to the pictures?” Mr Bard airily suggested to nobody in particular. “Something of that sort?” Troy looked at him but he was staring absently at the river. “I went to the pictures,” he said. “But not last night. This morning. Lovely.”