‘That’s just it. I want the luxury of a hopeless passion. There. I can say to myself, there is the back of his adorable head, and nothing I can say will soften it.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. However, I’ll try to live up to your requirements-my true love hath my heart, but my bones are my own. Just at the moment, though, the immortal bones obey control of dying flesh and dying soul. What the devil did I come over here for?’

‘Soft music.’

‘So it was. Now, my little minstrels of Portland Place! Strike, you myrtle-crowned boys, ivied maidens, strike together!’

‘Arrch!’ said the loud speaker, ‘… and the beds should be carefully made up beforehand with good, well-rotted horse-manure or…’

‘Help!’

‘That,’ said Peter, switching off, ‘is quite enough of that.’

‘The man has a dirty mind.’

‘Disgusting. I shall write a stiff letter to Sir John Reith. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing that just when a fellow’s bubbling over with the purest and most sacred emotions when he’s feeling like Galahad and Alexander and dark Gable all rolled into one-when he, so to speak, bestrides the clouds and sits upon the bosom of the air-’

‘Dearest! are you sure it’s not the sherry?’

‘Sherry!’ His rocketing mood burst in a shower of spangles. ‘Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear…’ He halted, gesturing into the shadows. ‘Hullo! they’ve put the moon on the wrong side.’

‘Very careless of the limelight merchant.’

‘Drunk again, drunk again… Perhaps you’re right about the sherry… Curse this moon, it leaks. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere!’ He wrapped his handkerchief about the stem of the lamp, brought it across from the table and set it beside her, so that the red-orange of her dress shone in the pool of light like an oriflamme. ‘That’s better. Now we begin all over again. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear. That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops… Observe the fruit-trees. Malus aspidistriensis. Specially imported by the management at colossal expense…’

The voices came faintly to Aggie Twitterton, crouched shiveringly in the room overhead. She had meant to escape by the back stair; but at the bottom of it stood Mrs Ruddle, engaged in a long expostulation with Bunter, whose replies from the kitchen were inaudible. Apparently on the point of departure, she kept on coming back to make some fresh remark. Any minute she might take herself off, and then Bunter came out so silently that Miss Twitterton did not hear him till his voice boomed suddenly from just below her:

‘I have nothing more to say, Mrs Ruddle. Good night to you.’

The back door shut sharply and there was the noise of the drawing of bolts. One could not now escape unheard. In another moment, feet began to ascend the stair. Miss Twitterton withdrew hastily into Harriet’s bedroom. The feet came on; they passed the branching of the stair; they were coming in. Miss Twitterton retired still further, shocked to find herself trapped in a gentleman’s bedroom that smelt faintly of bay rum and Harris tweed. Next door she heard the crackle of a kindled fire, the rattle of curtain rings upon the rods, a subdued clink, the pouring of fresh water into the ewer. Then the door-latch lifted, and she fled breathless back into the darkness of the stairs.

‘Romeo was a green fool, and all his trees had green apples. Sit there, Aholibah, and play the queen, with a vine-leaf crown and a sceptre of pampas-grass. Lend me your cloak, and I will be the kings and all their horsemen. Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue. Speak it! My snow-white horses foam and fret-sorry, I’ve got into the wrong poem, but I’m pawing the ground like anything. Say on, lady of the golden voice. “I am the Queen Aholibah-’

She laughed; and let the magnificent nonsense roll out organ-mouthed:

‘My lips kissed dumb the word of Ah

Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.

God wrought tome my royal bed;

The inner work there of was red,

The outer work was ivory.

My mouth’s heat was the heat of flame

With lust towards the kings that came,

With horsemen riding royally-

Peter, you’ll break that chair. You are a lunatic!’

‘My dearest, I’ve got to be.’ He flung the cloak aside and stood before her. ‘When I try to be serious, I make such a bloody fool of myself. It’s idiotic.’ His voice wavered with uncertain overtones. “Think of it-laugh at it-a well-fed, well-groomed, well-off Englishman of forty-five in a boiled shirt and an eyeglass going down on his knees to his wife-to his own wife, which makes it so much funnier-and saying. to her-and saying-’

‘Tell me, Peter.’

‘I can’t. I daren’t.’

She lifted his head between her hands, and what she saw in his face stopped her heart. ‘Oh, my dear, don’t… Not all that… It’s terrifying to be so happy.’

‘Ah, no, it’s not,’ he said quickly, taking courage from her fear.

‘All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday;

Running it never runs from us away

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.’

‘Peter-’

He shook his head, vexed at his own impotence.

‘How can I find words? Poets have taken them all, and left me with nothing to say or do.’

‘Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.’

He found it hard to believe. ‘Have I done that?’

‘Oh, Peter-’ Somehow she must make him believe it, because it mattered so much that he should. ‘All my life I have been wandering in the dark-but now I have found your heart-and am satisfied.’

‘And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?-I love you-I am at rest with you-I have come home.’

There was such a stillness in the room that Miss Twitterton thought it must be empty. She crept down softly, stair by stair, afraid lest Bunter should hear her. The door was ajar and she pushed it open inch by inch. The lamp had been moved, so that she found herself in darkness-but the room was not empty, after all. On the far side, framed in the glowing circle of the lamplight, the two figures were bright and motionless as a picture-the dark woman in a dress like flame, with her arms locked about the man’s bowed shoulders and his golden head in her lap. They were so quiet that even the great ruby on, her left hand shone steadily without a twinkle. Miss Twitterton, turned to stone, dared neither advance nor retreat.

‘Dear.’ The word was no more than a whisper, spoken without a movement. ‘My heart’s heart. My own dear lover and husband.’ The locked hands must have tightened their hold, for the red stone flashed sudden fire. ‘You are mine, you are mine, all mine.’

The head came up at that and his voice caught the triumph id sent it back in a mounting wave:

‘Yours. Such as I am, yours. With all my faults, all my follies, yours utterly and for ever. While this poor, passionate, mountebank body has hands to hold you and lips to say, I love you-’

‘Oh!’ cried Miss Twitterton, with a great strangling sob, ‘I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!’ The little scene broke like a bubble. The chief actor leapt to his feet and said very distinctly: ‘Damn and blast!’

Harriet got up. The sudden shattering of her ecstatic mood and a swift, defensive anger for Peter’s sake made her tone sharper than she knew. ‘Who is it? What are you doing there?’ She stepped out of the pool of light and peered into the dusk. ‘Miss Twitterton?’

Miss Twitterton, incapable of speech and terrified beyond conception, went on choking hysterically. A voice from the direction of the fireplace said grimly:

‘I knew I should make a bloody fool of myself.’

‘Something’s happened,’ said Harriet, more gently, putting out a reassuring hand. Miss Twitterton found her voice: