“You must yield to it. Write to him and tell him you’re coming. You might enclose a bus ticket from Putney to the Fulham Road. How do you address him: ‘Dear Cousin—’ But what is his Christian name?”

“I’ve no idea. He’s just P. E. Garbel. To his intimates, he tells me, he is known as Peg. He adds, inevitably, a quip about being square in a round hole.”

“Roqueville being the hole?”

“Presumably.”

“Has he a job, do you think?”

“For all I know he may be writing a monograph on bicarbonate-of-soda. If he is he’ll probably ask us to read the manuscript.”

“At all events we must meet him. Put down that damn palette and tell me you’re coming.”

Troy wiped her hands on her smock. “We’re coming,” she said.

ii

In his château outside Roqueville, Mr. Oberon looked across the nighted Mediterranean towards North Africa and then smiled gently upon his assembled guests.

“How fortunate we are,” he said. “Not a jarring note. All gathered together with one pure object in mind.” He ran over their names as if they composed a sort of celestial roll-call. “Our youngest disciple,” he said, beaming on Ginny Taylor. “A wonderful field of experience awaits her. She stands on the threshold of ecstasy. It is not too much to say, of ecstasy. And Robin too.” Robin Herrington, who had been watching Ginny Taylor, looked up sharply. “Ah, youth, youth,” sighed Mr. Oberon, ambiguously, and turned to the remaining guests, two men and a woman. “Do we envy them?” he asked, and answered himself. “No! No, for ours is the richer tilth. We are the husbandmen, are we not?”

Dr. Baradi lifted his dark, fleshy and intelligent head. He looked at his host. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “We are precisely that. And when Annabella arrives — I think you said she was coming?”