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'Do we meet again then?...I know you're very busy...'

Tietjens said:

'Yes. I'll come and pick you out from Lady Job's, if they don't keep me too long at the War Office. I'm dining, as you know, at Macmaster's; I don't suppose I shall stop late.'

'I'd come,' Sylvia said, 'to Macmaster's, if you thought it was appropriate. I'd bring Claudine Sandbach and General Wade. We're only going to the Russian dancers. We'd cut off early.'

Tietjens could settle that sort of thought very quickly. 'Yes, do,' he said hurriedly. 'It would be appreciated.' He got to the door: he came back: his brother was nearly through. He said to Sylvia, and for him the occasion was a very joyful one:

'I've worried out some of the words of that song. It runs:

"Somewhere or other there must surely be

The face not seen: the voice not heard..."

Probably it's "the voice not ever heard" to make up the metre...I don't know the writer's name. But I hope I'll worry it all out during the day.'

Sylvia had gone absolutely white.

'Don't!' she said. 'Oh...don't.' She added coldly: 'Don't take the trouble,' and wiped her tiny handkerchief across her lips as Tietjens went away.

She had heard the song at a charity concert and had cried as she heard it. She had read, afterwards, the words in the programme and had almost cried again. But she had lost the programme and had never come across the words again. The echo of them remained with her like something terrible and alluring: like a knife she would someday take out and with which she would stab herself.

III

The two brothers walked twenty steps from the door along the empty Inn pavements without speaking. Each was completely expressionless. To Christopher it seemed like Yorkshire. He had a vision of Mark, standing on the lawn at Groby, in his bowler hat and with his umbrella, whilst the shooters walked over the lawn, and up the hill to the butts. Mark probably never had done that; but it was so that his image always presented itself to his brother. Mark was considering that one of the folds of his umbrella was disarranged. He seriously debated with himself whether he should unfold it at once and refold it--which was a great deal of trouble to take!--or whether he should leave it till he got to his club, where he would tell the porter to have it done at once. That would mean that he would have to walk for a mile and a quarter through London with a disarranged umbrella, which was disagreeable.

He said:

'If I were you I wouldn't let that banker fellow go about giving you testimonials of that sort.'

Christopher said:

'Ah!'

He considered that, with a third of his brain in action, he was over a match for Mark, but he was tired of discussions. He supposed that some unpleasant construction would be put by his brother's friend, Ruggles, on the friendship of Port Scatho for himself. But he had no curiosity. Mark felt a vague discomfort. He said:

'You had a cheque dishonoured at the club this morning?'

Christopher said:

'Yes.'

Mark waited for explanations. Christopher was pleased at the speed with which the news had travelled: it confirmed what he had said to Port Scatho. He viewed his case from outside. It was like looking at the smooth working of a mechanical model.

Mark was more troubled. Used as he had been for thirty years to the vociferous south, he had forgotten that there were taciturnities still. If at his Ministry he laconically accused a transport clerk of remissness, or if he accused his French mistress--just as laconically--of putting too many condiments on his nightly mutton chop, or too much salt in the water in which she boiled his potatoes, he was used to hearing a great many excuses or negations, uttered with energy and continued for long. So he had got into the habit of considering himself the only laconic being in the world. He suddenly remembered with discomfort--but also with satisfaction--that his brother was his brother.

He knew nothing about Christopher, for himself. He had seemed to look at his little brother down avenues