“Nevertheless,” Charles said, “I think you should do so.”

Florence shot a resentful look at him and muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said it wasn’t so easy. She knows. She can read. I’ve told her.” She glowered at him and then said, “I take my orders from her. Always have and always will.”

He waited for a moment. “Quite so,” he said. “But all the same—” and hearing his wife’s voice, put the spray-gun down, gave a half-sigh and turned to confront the familiar room.

Miss Bellamy came into it wearing Florence’s gift. There was a patch of sunshine in the room and she posed in it, expectant, unaware of its disobliging candour.

“Look at my smashing shift!” she cried. “Florrie’s present! A new birthday suit.”

She had “made an entrance,” comic-provocative, skilfully French-farcical. She had no notion at all of the disservice she had done herself.

The voice that she had once called charming said, “Marvellous. How kind of Florence.”

He was careful to wait a little longer before he said, “Well, darling, I shall leave you to your mysteries,” and went down to his solitary breakfast.

There was no particular reason why Richard Dakers should feel uplifted that morning; indeed, there were many formidable reasons why he should not. Nevertheless, as he made his way by bus and on foot to Pardoner’s Place, he did experience, very strongly, that upward kick of the spirit which lies in London’s power of bestowal. He sat in the front seat at the prow of the bus and felt like a figurehead, cleaving the tide of the King’s Road, masterfully above it, yet gloriously of it. The Chelsea shops were full of tulips and when, leaving the bus, he walked to the corner of Pardoner’s Row, there was his friend the flower-woman with buckets of them, still pouted up in buds.

“Morning, dear,” said the flower-woman. “Duck of a day, innit?”