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no longer looking. He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out his long legs, and sat, absorbed, brooding, his heart enfranchised and appeased, she knew, as was her own heart, by the splendour and magnanimity of the music. She played her part well. And Celia played well. Captain Ingpen did not look up at them when they had finished. He remained sitting in his corner, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes fixed before him. Only when she was definitely moving towards the door, did he rise to go to open it for her and Celia to pass through, and as she gave him her hand in farewell, she could no longer interpret the cold dark glance that floated, from far away it seemed, to rest as if with a bitter physical pressure upon her. ‘He cares for music, that speechless person,’ she said to Celia at the door. And Celia said: ‘It’s difficult to be sure of anything he cares for; but I feel that, too. He always sits and listens when I play.’

And after this meeting six weeks passed; Clive and Hester had been settled in The Crofts for ten days, the summer was over, before she saw Captain Ingpen again. On the October afternoon she had turned her steps in the direction of the woods that lay, across the fields, behind her cottage; not that