Mathilda laid down the eyebrow-pencil. "You haven't brought your playwright here in the hope of winning Nat's heart, Paula? My poor girl!"

"He must do it for me!" Paula said, impatiently pushing back the hair from her brow. "It's art, Mathilda! Oh! When you have read it - !"

"Art plus a part for Paula?" murmured Mathilda.

The shaft glanced off Paula's armour. "Yes. A part. Such a part! It was written for me. He says I inspired it."

"Sunday performance, and an audience composed of intellectuals. I know!"

"Uncle has got to listen to me! I must play it. I must, Mathilda, do you hear me?"

"Yes, my sweet, you must play it. Meanwhile, dinner will be ready in twenty minutes' time."

"Oh, it doesn't take me ten minutes to change! Paula said impatiently.

Mathilda reflected that this was true. Paula never bothered about her clothes. She was neither dowdy nor smart; she flung raiment on, and somehow one never knew what she was wearing: it didn't count, it was nothing but a covering for Paula's thin body: you were aware only of Paula herself. "I hate you, Paula; my God, how I hate you!" Mathilda said, knowing that people remembered her by the exquisite creations she wore. "Go away! I'm less fortunate."

Paula's gaze focused upon her. "Darling, your clothes are perfect."

"I don't know. Such an absurd fuss! As though the house weren't big enough - ! Sturry said he'd see to it."

"Well, as long as your playwright doesn't wear soft shirts and a plume of hair - !"

"What do these things matter?"

"They'll matter fast enough to your Uncle Nat," prophesied Mathilda.

They did. Nathaniel, introduced without warning to Willoughby Roydon, glared at him, and at Paula, and could not even bring himself to utter conventional words of welcome. It was left to Joseph to fill the breach, and he did so, aware of Nat's fury, and covering it up with his own overflowing goodwill.