“No.”

The word was pronounced in a peculiarly firm and resonant manner.

Wilfrid sighed deeply.

“Not a womanly nature.”

Sally said “No” again, and then spoilt the effect by a little gurgle of laughter. “Wilfrid, will you get out! I’ve got to concentrate on the professor, and then get on with a kind ‘No, I couldn’t possibly’ letter to a woman who says she has written a novel, and she’s afraid her writing is dreadfully bad and she can’t afford to have it typed, but will Marigold read it? And that’s only a beginning, because there are three people who want autographs, and one who wants advice, and two I’m saving up to the last who just say how grateful they are because Marigold has given them a lot of pleasure. So will you please get up and go away, because I’m not getting on, and I’ve got to if I don’t want to sit up half the night, which I don’t.”

“Why don’t you?” said Wilfrid in his laziest voice. “If you don’t sit up at night, when do you sit up? All my best ideas come to me then. No distractions, no interruptions. The mind just floating-not quite detached, but almost imperceptibly linked with the abstract. There is a rhythm, a sense of the imponderable, a kind of floating haze.”

“It sounds like drugs or drink,” said Sally frankly.

“There might be some flavour of alcohol. But not drugs, darling-they are lowering to the Moral Tone so conspicuous in my Work.”

“I hadn’t noticed it.”

“Dim-witted of you. However one can’t have everything, and your looks are pleasing. I did ask you to marry me? These things slip the memory. What is much more important at the moment is the matter of the outing or ousting of David Moray. You wouldn’t like to wake up in the morning and read in the paper that I have been driven to the violent elimination of Mrs. Hunable. My nature is one of peace, but I have an exceptionally sensitive psyche-if that is what they call the thing that takes charge and nerves you to murder the people who have been annoying you.