“I’m sorry.” He raised his hand, kind man; I was not to excuse myself. I became the dupe again. “This is why you won’t let her go outside Bourani?”

“Of course.”

“Couldn’t she go out… “I looked at the tip of my cigarette… “under supervision?”

“She is, in law, certifiable. And incurable. That is the personal responsibility I have undertaken. To ensure that she never enters an asylum, or a clinic, again.”

“But you let her wander around. She could easily escape.”

He raised his head in sharp contradiction. “Never. Her nurse never leaves her.”

“Her nurse!”

“He is very discreet. It distresses her to have him always by her, especially here, so he keeps well in the background. One day you will see him.”

I thought, yeah, with his jackal-head on. It would not wash; but the extraordinary thing was that I knew, and more than half suspected that Conchis knew that I knew, it would not wash. I hadn’t played chess for years; but I remembered that the better you got, the more it became a game of false sacrifices. He was testing not my powers of belief, but my powers of unbelief; assaying my incredulity. I kept my face innocent.

“This is why you keep her on the yacht?”

“Yacht?”

“I thought you kept her on a yacht.”

“That is her little secret. Allow her to keep it.”

I smiled. “So this is why my two predecessors came here. And were so quiet about it.”

“John was an excellent… seeker. But Mitford was a disaster. You see, Nicholas, he was totally tricked by Lily. In one of her persecution phases. As usual I, who devote my life to her, became the persecutor. And Mitford attempted one night—in the crudest and most harmful way—to, as he put it, rescue her. Of course her nurse stepped in. There was a most disagreeable fracas. It upset her deeply. If I sometimes seem irritable to you, it is because I am so anxious not to see any repetition of last year.” He raised his hand. “I mean nothing personal. You are very intelligent, and you are a gentleman; they are both qualities that Mitford was without.”

I rubbed my nose. I thought of other awkward questions I could ask, and decided not to ask them; to play the dupe. The constant harping on my intelligence made me as suspicious as a crow. There are three types of intelligent person: the first so intelligent that being called very intelligent must seem natural and obvious; the second sufficiently intelligent to see that he is being flattered, not described; the third so little intelligent that he will believe anything. I knew I belonged to the second kind. I could not absolutely disbelieve Conchis; all he said could—just—be true. I supposed there were still poor little rich psychotics kept out of in’stitutions by their doting relations; but Conchis was the least doting person I had ever met. It didn’t wash, it didn’t wash. There were various things about Lily, looks, emotional non sequiturs, those sudden tears, that in retrospect seemed to confirm his story. They proved nothing. Her schizophrenia apart, though, his new explanation of what went on at Bourani made more sense; a group of idle people, talented and bored international rich, and a man like Conchis and a place like Bourani…

“Well,” he said, “do you believe me?”

“Do I look as if I don’t?”

“We are none of us what we look.”

“You shouldn’t have offered me that suicide pill.”

“You think all my prussic acid is ratafia?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m your guest, Mr. Conchis. Naturally I take your word.”

For a moment, masks seemed to drop on both sides; I was looking at a face totally without humor and he, I suppose, was looking at one without generosity. An at last proclaimed hostility; a clash of wills. We both smiled, and we both knew we smiled to hide a fundamental truth: that we could not trust each other one inch.

“I wish to say two final things, Nicholas. Whether you believe what I have said is comparatively unimportant. But you must believe one thing. Lily is susceptible and very dangerous—both things without realizing it herself. Like a very fine blade, she can easily be hurt—but she can also hurt. She can hurt you, as I know to my cost, because she can deceive you again and again, if you are foolish enough to let her. We have all had to learn to remain completely detached emotionally from her. Because it is on our emotions that she will prey—if we give her the chance.”

I remained staring at the edge of the tablecloth.

“And the second thing?”

“Now we have had this little talk, please let us agree to continue as if we had not had it. I will behave as if I had not told you the secret. And I want you to do the same.”

“All right.”

He stood up and held out his hand, which I shook.

“Now. Do you feel like some hard work?”

“No. But lead me to it.”

He took me to one of the corners of the vegetable garden. Part of the supporting wall had collapsed, and he wanted it built up again, under his supervision. I had to break the dry earth with a pickaxe, shovel it back, lift the heavy stones, arrange them as he directed, packing them with earth, which he watered, his sole contribution apart from giving orders, to bind the wall together again. The wind kept blowing and it was cooler than usual; but I was soon sweating like a pig. I knew the wall must have collapsed sometime back, and I thought it peculiar that a man as rich as Conchis could not afford a few drachmas to hire a man from the village to do it for him. I guessed the real reason: I had to be kept busy, out of the way. All the time since leaving Lily I had listened for the sound of the boat, or a boat. But there had been none. I hadn’t forgotten that I was going to communicate with other worlds that evening; a really complicated episode in the masque was no doubt to be mounted. That was why I was being kept so occupied. And all the time, too, I had Alison’s telegram in my hip-pocket; but the one thing I longed for was to hear from him that I was after all to be his guest over halfterm.

I gave myself a break to have a cigarette. Conchis, in dark blue jumper and shorts, looked sardonically down at me, hand on hips.

“Labor is man’s crowning glory.”

“Not this man’s.”

“I quote Marx.”

I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough.

“I quote blisters.”

“Never mind. You have earned your passage.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.” He remained staring down at me, as if I amused him; as clowns amuse philosophers; but also a little as if he felt kinder towards me.

“Your telegram was opened when it arrived. I read it. This is… ?”

I nodded curtly. “I shan’t go.”

“Of course you will go.”

“I don’t want to meet her any more. It was only loneliness before.”

He stared down at me. I was sitting against a pine trunk.

“I shall be away next weekend. We shall all be away. Otherwise I should have been very happy to invite you both.”

In spite of being warned, I felt a shock of disappointment, which I tried to hide.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But if all goes well, we shall be here the week after.”

“In need of a seeker?”

“In need of a seeker.”

He contemplated me; reverted tacitly to Alison.

“A woman is like a keel.”

“There are keels and keels.”

“What you told me of her sounded very admirable. Very much what you should have. What you need.”

I saw that I had been neatly trapped into not asking him why in that case he had set Lily as bait for me. It could always be dismissed as persecution mania.

“It’s really my business, Mr. Conchis. My decision.”

“Of course. You are quite right. Please.” He went briskly away to get some more water, and when he came back I had set to again, expending on the job my sullen annoyance at not being invited. Half an hour later the wall was back to something like its proper shape. I carried the tools to a shed beside the cottage and we went back round the front of the house. Conchis said he was going down to check that the boat was securely moored; I would no doubt want to wash.