Shaken, she turned back to the room. The applause was tremendous, but her own contribution was half-hearted and pre-occupied. When the clapping died down the door opened and Mr. Blandfoot was announced. Mrs. Pepperthwaite noticed it was already eleven o’clock.

He stood in the middle of the room without seeming to face any one part of it, his figure so thin it was like a silhouette, his wide shoulders moving independently like the arms of a semaphore. He drew all eyes towards him and radiated a silence which threatened to stretch into the corners of the room. But Mrs. Marling was already on her feet.

‘How nice to see you,’ she said, ‘and what a pity you missed the last piece.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Mr. Blandfoot. ‘I heard it from the passage, outside the door.’

‘You would have been so much more comfortable in here,’ returned Mrs. Marling, as though he had stayed outside on purpose. ‘Now you must come and sit by me.’ She piloted him to a chair by her side.

The pianist played again as brilliantly as ever and the guests listened entranced, but Mrs. Pepperthwaite knew that the party had changed its character. Before it was fulfilling itself as it went along: now it was leading up to something. Up or down? Mrs. Pepperthwaite had a sense of increasing velocity; her thoughts seemed to outstrip her and to leave her dissatisfied with the present. She felt that her remarks were now aimed at a moving target which they failed to hit. In the next interval she wandered uneasily into the buffet. Mr. Blandfoot was drinking a whisky and soda, even yellower than himself. Scraps of conversation kept coming to her ears. ‘Oh—probably in the cloakroom with his hat.’ ‘But that’s only a figure of speech, my dear, he can’t sleep with it.’ ‘Really, I can’t say, it might be a Vermeer: I know so little about the Dutch School,’ ‘They invented painting in oils.’ ‘But no one said it was an oil-painting.’ ‘But, my dear, the paint would run.’ ‘Not after all these years.’ ‘His waistcoat pocket? But it isn’t a miniature.’ ‘Eva Stornway says it’s not old at all: he had it made for himself.’ ‘Oh, he was kidding her; he looks just that sort of man. Hesketh must know better.’

Vaguely distressed she walked over to where Hesketh was standing, and heard him say to Mrs. Marling, with a smile:

‘A bad fairy, I’m afraid.’

‘Do you think he will cast a spell?’

‘If he does, Alice, it is you who will be the Sleeping Beauty, not me.’

‘Ah, but I invited him: he can’t do me any harm: it’s against the rules.

‘When shall you ask him to——?’

‘I don’t quite know, Arthur. Yes, please, I will have some champagne. Perhaps after the next piece.’

The last piece was over. Some called for more, but the majority agreed, with a note of determination in their voices, that the pianist had been only too generous: they must not be greedy and presume upon his kindness. Mr. Melzic bowed to right and left, rising from his stool a little reluctantly: a monarch relinquishing his throne. The guests moved about studying pictures and objets d’art: it was midnight but they made no attempt to move, and they talked so little that everyone could hear the sound of his own voice.

‘Where’s Blandfoot?’ asked someone, bolder than the rest.

‘In the buffet, I think.’

‘Shall I fetch him?’

‘What for?’

‘Oh, he’ll know.’

At that moment Mr. Blandfoot entered. His cheek bones were flushed and his eyes bright. He walked on to the hearth-rug and stumbled over it, making a fold, which he unceremoniously kicked. The fold did not yield to his treatment, so he kicked it again, harder than before. Then he stared moodily at it while the others fell back into a rough semicircle. There was literally a breach in the company. Mrs. Marling moved quietly into it.

‘Don’t trouble about the carpet, Mr. Blandfoot,’ she said. ‘It always behaves like that.’

‘Bit dangerous, isn’t it?’

‘When you’ve been here a few more times,’ said Mrs. Marling quietly, ‘you’ll get used to its ways.’

‘I might have fallen over it.’

‘How we should have laughed!’ said Mrs. Marling, looking up at him with her bright eyes.

There was a pause.

‘But do do something for us, Mr. Blandfoot,’ she continued persuasively. ‘Dance for us.’

‘I can’t dance,’ he muttered.

‘Then sing us a song?’

He was silent.

‘Or tell us a story?’

He glowered down at her helplessly.

‘He’s a strong, silent man,’ she said to the company at large. ‘But there’s something you can do for us, Mr. Blandfoot!’

‘What?’

‘Why, show us your picture!’

‘Yes, do show it to us!’ came in a confused murmur from the room. There was a general movement. The tension relaxed. Smiles broke out on puzzled faces: women made delicate gestures of eagerness; men settled themselves comfortably into their chairs. The optimistic party-spirit had reasserted itself, and once again Mrs. Marling’s drawing-room breathed freely. Even Mr. Blandfoot smiled.

‘Do you really want to see it?’ he asked them.

‘Yes, yes,’ they cried, all looking towards him.

‘But I must warn you,’ he added, ‘that it may be more than you bargain for.’

Mrs. Marling looked up from the chair in which, when Mr. Blandfoot showed signs of coming to heel, she had seated herself.

‘Will it be like the head of Medusa? Will it turn us to stone?’

‘I don’t know what it will turn you into,’ he said, looking round him reflectively.

They all smiled delightedly at each other.

‘Nothing worse than donkeys?’ suggested someone facetiously.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, ‘how bad you can be.’

‘And after to-night,’ asked one of the guests, ‘everyone will be able to see it—it will be hung up in your house?’

Mr. Blandfoot thought a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is a private view, and I doubt if I shall show the picture again. You might not even want to see it a second time.’

There was a pause. Mrs. Marling stirred in her chair.

‘Would you like me to send someone to fetch it?’

Everyone hung on Mr. Blandfoot’s lips.

‘No, thank you, I have it on me, here.’

‘Dear me, how the man does tease us,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Come on, Blandfoot,’ said a man from among the company. ‘You can’t get us more excited than we are now. You’ll miss your market if you keep us on tenterhooks any longer.’

‘He’s forgotten it, and doesn’t dare say so.’

‘Blandfoot, we shall skin you alive if you disappoint us. Alice has all the engines of Oriental torture in the hall being heated ready for you, so hurry up!’

‘I tell you what,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, ‘if you skin me alive you can have the picture to keep. There’s an offer.’

Mrs. Marling rose from her chair. ‘Mr. Blandfoot, I don’t think you really want to show us the picture. Keep it for another time. It’s late now, and we don’t want to worry you,’ She glanced at the clock.

Mr. Blandfoot pulled something slowly out of his pocket. Every eye was focused upon his waistcoat, and when the object turned out to be in truth his watch, there was a general sigh, half of relief, half of disappointment.

‘No, no,’ he said, ignoring what was perhaps the most palpable hint Mrs. Marling had ever given in her life.

‘Believe me, there’s plenty of time. Only I should be much obliged if you would send and ask if my car is standing at the door.’

‘I’m afraid all the servants have gone to bed,’ said Mrs. Marling.

The silence that followed this pronouncement was broken by Mrs. Pepperthwaite’s thin piping voice:

‘There must be someone about to give us back our hats and coats.’

Mrs. Marling looked straight in front of her; and a man at the back of the room said in a good natured voice: ‘All right, Blandfoot, I’ll go and look.’

When he had gone the murmur of conversation began again, though Mr. Blandfoot and Mrs. Marling, at their posts on the hearth-rug, contributed nothing to it.