Though Dixon waited for ten seconds or more, nothing answered him except the metallic tapping, which had increased in volume and pace.

'Things are very difficult, things are very difficult, things are very difficult,' Dixon gabbled into the phone, then mentioned a few difficult things which occurred to him as suitable tasks for Dr Caton to have a go at. Still devising variations of this theme, he went out muttering to himself, wagging his head and shoulders like a puppet. A rival to Welch had appeared in the field of evasion-technique, verbal division, and in the physical division of the same field this chap had Welch whacked at the start: self-removal to South America was the traditional climax of an evasive career. Up in his room, Dixon filled his lungs to their utmost and groaned for half a minute or more without drawing breath. He got out the notes for his lecture and went on working them up into a script.

Five hours later, he had what he estimated as forty-four minutes' worth of lecture. It seemed by then as if there were no facts anywhere in the universe, in his own brain or anyone else's or just lying about loose, which could possibly be brought within his present scope. And even so, he'd been travelling for a large part of his forty-four minutes along the knife-edge dividing the conceivably-just-about-relevant from the irreducibly, immitigably irrelevant. The fifteen minutes needed to top the thing up to the fifty-nine minutes he'd set himself would have to be occupied by a presumably rather extensive conclusion, and he didn't want to write one of those. Something on the lines of 'Finally, thank God for the twentieth century' would satisfy him, but it wouldn't satisfy Welch. Then he seized his pencil again, gave a happy laugh, and wrote: 'This survey, brief as it is, would have no purpose if left as a mere' - he crossed out 'mere' -'historical record. There are valuable lessons here for us, living in an age of prefabricated amusements as we do. One wonders how one of the men or women I have tried to describe would react to such typically modern phenomena as the cinema, the radio, the television. What would he think, accustomed as he was (had been? would have been? is?) to making his own music (must look at Welch at this point), of a society where people like himself are regarded as oddities, where to play an instrument himself, oneself, instead of paying others to do so, to sing a madrigal instead of a cheap dance-lyric, is to incur the dreaded title of "crank", where…'

He stopped writing and ran out into the bathroom. He started washing with frenzied speed. He'd left it just late enough; with luck he'd have time to get ready and rush along to the hotel for tea with Christine, but no time to think about tea with Christine. Nevertheless, for all the energy of his movements, he began to feel a little queasy with apprehension.

He arrived at the hotel two minutes late. On turning into the lounge where tea was served, he felt a pang of fear, or whatever emotion it was, kicking at his diaphragm when he saw Christine already sitting waiting for him. He'd counted on a few minutes' grace to think of things to say to her; if it had been Margaret, he'd have had them and more.

She smiled as he approached. 'Hallo, Jim.'

He was feeling physically very nervous.' Hallo' he said with a half-cough. Fighting off temptations to see that his tie was straight, his pocket-flaps not tucked in, his flies buttoned, he sat down cautiously in front of her. Today she wore a jacket of the same material as her plum-coloured skirt, and these and the white blouse all seemed newly ironed. She looked unmanningly pretty, so much so that Dixon's head began to spin with the effort of thinking of something to say, something different from what he'd come on purpose to say.

'How are you?' she asked.

'All right, thanks; I've been working. You managed to get away without any fuss, I hope?'

'I don't know about without any fuss.'

'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?'

'I think Bertrand was rather suspicious. I told him there were one or two things I wanted to do in town. I didn't mention anything in particular, because I thought that would have looked a bit…'

'Quite. And how did he take that?'

'Not too well. He came back with a lot of things about me being my own mistress, and I was to do what I wanted to do, and wasn't to feel I was tied in any way. It made me feel rather mean.'

'I can understand that all right.'

She leant forward and put her elbows on the low circular table between them. 'You see, Jim, in a way I think it was rather a bad thing my coming to meet you at all. But I'd said I would and so I had to come. And, of course, I still wanted to, just as much as I did when you asked me. But I've been thinking it all over, and I've decided… Look, shall we have our tea first, and then talk about it?'

'No, tell me now, whatever it is you want to say.'

'All right, then. It's this, Jim: I think I was a bit carried away by one thing and another then, when you asked me to come today, I mean. I think I wouldn't have said I'd come if I'd had time to think what I was doing. I'd still have wanted to come just as much, though. I'm sorry to have got on to this straightaway, we've hardly had time to say hallo to each other, but you can see what I'm leading up to, can't you?'

Dixon didn't reflect that this attitude would make his task an easy one. He said in a flat voice: 'You mean you don't want to go on with this?'

'I don't really see how we could go on with it, do you? I wish I'd left all this till later, but it's been rather on my mind. You see, you're sort of stuck up here, aren't you? Or do you get to London fairly often?'

'No, I hardly ever go there.'

'Well then, the only chance we'd have to see each other would be when Bertrand asked me to come and stay with his parents, like now, and I wouldn't feel right about sneaking off to see you the whole time. And in any case…' She stopped and made a facial movement which caused Dixon to turn round in his chair.

A youthful waiter had approached, his footfalls silenced by the carpet, and was now shifting from one foot to the other dose by, breathing through his mouth. Dixon thought he'd never seen a human frame radiating so much insolence without recourse to speech, gesture, or any contortion of the features. This figure swung a silver tray in an attempt at careless grace, and was looking past Dixon at Christine. When Dixon said 'Tea for two, please' the waiter smiled faintly at her, as if in lofty but sincere commiseration, then swung aside, allowing the tray to rebound from his kneecap as he walked off.

'Sorry; what were you saying?' Dixon said.

'It's just that I am, oh, tied up with Bertrand, that's all. It's not so much a question of having obligations towards him or anything like that. I just don't want to behave foolishly. Not that I think there's anything foolish about coming to see you. Oh, I just don't seem to be able to put it in any way that sounds at all sensible.' Little by little and intermittently, she was adopting her 'dignant' tone and physical attitude. 'I'm afraid all I can ask you to do is try to understand. I know that's what people always say, and I don't feel I understand very well myself, so how I can expect you to I don't know, but there it is.'

'You're going back on what you said about being rather fed-up with Bertrand, then?'

'No, all that's still quite true. What I'm trying to do now is take the rough with the smooth. The rough parts are still as rough as they were when we talked about it in the taxi. But I must make an effort; I mustn't walk out of things just when I feel like it, I can't go about expecting people to behave as I want them to the whole time. There's bound to be a certain amount of up and down in a relationship like the one I'm having with Bertrand. It's no use getting in a paddy about that, it's got to be accepted, even if I don't want to accept it. The trouble is I've got to push you around while I'm doing it.'