"You say that just for me," she told him.

"I don’t. Why should I?"

"But you can't pretend about us, and that we know each other, was just luck," she complained. "With all we might mean," she added. "You cheapen it."

"Well to go on as we do is cheap," he said, apologetically.

"Oh you'll never forgive once all this is over, I know you won't," she cried out, then stopped so as to face him. He turned away in distress. "Well?" she said. "You see, you can't even look. My darling, I'm so beastly." But she stood on there, and did not kiss him. Misery paralysed her.

"I'm so worried for you," he said at last, bringing out the truth.

"Because you're an economist, or why? Because you think if it wasn't me then it might just as well be another girl?"

"Now Liz," he said. "There was nothing further from my mind."

"What in particular are you worried about, then?"

"About your grandfather and you," he said, weakly.

"Why, what d'you mean," she demanded. "He's everything, I worship the very ground he treads. He works his poor old fingers to the bone for me. Without him I don't think I could go on." She, in her turn, swung round to show her back to Sebastian.

"Look," he said, "please be sensible," and his voice grated. "I can't imagine what you suppose I'm trying to make out. It's Miss Edge and Miss Baker's the trouble."

"Oh?" she asked, faced the man once more, with an expression of great vagueness.

"You're both of you a brace of innocents where those two women are concerned."

"My dear," she said. "You don't know Gapa very well if you think it. He's a match for two old spinsters!"

"He's not of this world, Liz," Sebastian objected.

"He's forgotten more of her twists and turns than you'll ever learn," she said. "There."

"I know, but so rash."

"Careful Seb, you can go too far, you know."

"I'm worried about this election. You understand what he is. He'll refuse what they offer, he'll simply disdain the whole thing."

"After what he's done for everyone in this country, I'd say he had a right to do as he liked," she announced, for her own purposes ignoring the fact that she had pressed her grandfather to a certain course only the night before.

"And I insist you can't, my dear girl. No-one can, these days."

"Don't be so absurd."

"But it's the State, Liz," he said. "What the old man will do is to wait till he's elected, then he'll refuse whatever they offer. And offend the powers that be very seriously. You know how he never even opens his correspondence."

"Oh but he does over important things," she lied, to reassure herself. "Besides they would never dare, with men like Mr Hargreaves in the inner circles to protect the three of us."

"It's his age, Liz. Any man as old stretches back to the bad times. He's suspect just because of the years he's lived. They won't like it."

"Then they'll have to swallow their silliness," she said. "Why, he's famous, he's one of the ornaments of the State."

"Look," he explained. "In the class of work your grandfather did they're just lyric poets. After twenty-five they're burned right out. He made his proof of his great theory when he was twenty-one. And he's seventy-six now."

"All the more wonderful then, isn't he?"

"Yes, but don't you realise his idea is poison to the younger men, who think they've exploded it?"

"That's only jealousy."

"I still maintain it would be very dangerous for him to go on as if everything was just plain sailing."

"Oh, if you're going to lose your nerve now, my dear, what on earth, I mean can you imagine, of all the beastly things to happen… oh what will become of you and me?"

"There," he said, genuinely disturbed, "I've upset you and that was the last I intended, the very last," he added. But she was not done yet.

"And what's all this to do with Miss Baker and Miss Edge?" she demanded, recollecting the way he had opened the conversation. She caught him out. He could not even remember how he had brought these ladies in. So he kissed her.

Miss Marchbanks, with Mr Rock's Persian on her lap, sat waiting in the sanctum for one of the senior students, Moira. Extremely shortsighted, she had taken off her spectacles and put these on Miss Edge's desk as though, in the crisis, at a time when she had been left in charge, she wished to look inwards, to draw on hid reserves, and thus to meet the drain on her resolution which this absence of the two girls had opened like an ulcer high under the ribs, where it fluttered, a blood stained dove with tearing claws.

So that when Moira entered, and did not shut the door but stood leant against it, half in, half out of the room, dressed in a pink overall (this colour being her badge of responsibility over others), her bare legs a gold haze to Miss Marchbanks' weak eyes, her figure, as the older woman thought, a rounded mass softly merged into the exaggeration of a grown woman's, her neck and face the colour of ripening apricots from sun with strong eyes that were an alive blue, shapeless to Miss Marchbanks' dull poached eggs of vision, but a child so alive, at some trick of summer light outside, that the older woman marvelled again how it could ever be that the State should send these girls, who were really women, to be treated like children; she marvelled as Moira stood respectfully flaunting maturity, even her short, curly hair strong about the face with the youth of her body, that the State (which had just raised the age of consent by two whole years) should lay down how this woman was to be treated as unfunctional, like a child that could scarcely blow its own nose.

"About the decorations, Moira," she began, dismissing certain uncertainties with a sigh, only to find she was unsure even of what she was about to say. "A thought came to me," she said, then forced herself on, "a thought for the alcove. Fir trees, Moira," she improvised. "And you know all that salt they delivered by mistake, well we could lay that for snow on the branches. It's what they used to do in films. So cool for dancing. Because it will be hot today, I think."

"That would be lovely," the girl agreed with a low, lazy voice, the opposite to her looks.

"Then you do think so, Moira?"

"Oh, I wish you had the arrangements for everything, Miss Marchbanks. Only Miss Edge said it must be rhododendrons and azaleas. She wants huge swags, she said. What are swags, Miss Marchbanks?"

"Great masses, child." Marchbanks for some reason began to feel reassured. "Loot, you see," she went on. "Well, that's that then. So you'd better take forty seniors to make a start."

"We have. And we won't cut the flowers, ever, not where they can see."

"It was just a thought," the older woman said. "Fir trees and waltzes. The snow for all of your white frocks as you go round.

Rather a pity, don't you think? But come in or out child, do. Don't stand there neither one thing nor the other." The girl laughed comfortably.

"You sent for me," she said.

"We're so busy. We've been started ages. But please come and look, oh please. We want your advice particularly." At this she shut the door, came up to the desk. They're incalculable, Marchbanks told herself. And up to yesterday I was so confident I knew their ways. Then her heart missed a beat as she wondered whether the child could be hinting.