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“Perhaps,” answered Mr. Scogan, “perhaps I’m an obscene old man, for I must confess that I cannot always regard it as wholly serious.”

“But I tell you . . .” began Mary furiously. Her face had flushed with excitement. Her cheeks were the cheeks of a great ripe peach.

“Indeed,” Mr. Scogan continued, “it seems to me one of the few permanently and everlastingly amusing subjects that exist. Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.”

“I entirely disagree,” said Mary. There was a silence.

Anne looked at her watch. “Nearly a quarter to eight,” she said. “I wonder when Ivor will turn up.” She got up from her deck-chair and, leaning her elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, looked out over the valley and towards the farther hills. Under the level evening light the architecture of the land revealed itself. The deep shadows, the bright contrasting lights gave the hills a new solidity. Irregularities of the surface, unsuspected before, were picked out with