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By Root 2354 0

a black coat, and some kind of a scarf, folded over like a stock, emphasised the long, graceful curve of her neck. Mona’s strident personality occupied the centre of the stage, and, besides, I felt for some reason a desire to postpone our meeting. Now, as she spoke to her brother, her face assumed an expression at once mocking and resigned, which had a sweetness about it that reminded me of the days when I had thought myself in love with her. I could still feel the tension her presence always brought, but without any of that hopeless romantic longing, so characteristic of love’s very early encounters: perhaps always imperfectly recaptured in the more realistic love-making of later life. Now, I experienced a kind of resentment at the reserve which enclosed her. It suggested a form of self- love, not altogether attractive. Yet the look of irony and amusement that had come into her face when she whispered the phrase about ‘Bob’s girl’ seemed to add something unexpected and charming to her still mysterious personality.

She was taller than I remembered, and carried herself well. Her face, like her brother’s, had become a shade fuller, a change that had coarsened his appearance, while in her the sharp, almost animal look I remembered was now softened. She had not entirely lost her air of being a schoolgirl; though certainly, it had to be admitted, a very smartly dressed school-girl. I thought to myself, not without complacence, that I was able to appreciate her without in any way losing my head, as I might once have done. There was still a curious fascination about her grey-blue eyes, slanting a little, as it were caught tightly between soft, lazy lids and dark, luxurious lashes. Once she had reminded me of Rubens’s Chapeau de Paille. Now for some reason—though there was not much physical likeness between them—I thought of the woman smoking the hookah in Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement. Perhaps there was something of the odalisque about Jean, too. She looked pale and rather tired. Any girl might excusably have appeared pale beside Mona, whose naturally high colouring had been increased by her own hand, almost as if for the stage or a cabaret performance.

‘Do you remember where we last met?’ she said, when Quiggin was gone.

‘At Stourwater.’

‘What a party.’

‘Was it awful?’

‘Some of it wasn’t very nice. Terrible rows between Baby and our host.’

‘But I thought they never had rows in public.’

‘They didn’t. That was what was so awful. Sir Magnus tremendously bland all the time and Baby absolutely bursting with bad temper.’

‘Do you ever hear from Baby Wentworth now?’

‘I had a card at Christmas. She is cloudlessly happy with her Italian.’

‘What is his profession?’

‘I don’t think I know you well enough to tell you. Perhaps after dinner.’

This, I remembered, was the way things had been at Stourwater: brisk conversation that led in the end to acres of silence. I made up my mind that this time I would not feel put out by her behaviour, whatever form it took.

‘Let’s have some food,’ said Templer, ‘I’m famished. So must you girls be, after your intellectual film.’

Afterwards, I could never recall much about that dinner in the Grill, except that the meal conveyed an atmosphere of powerful forces at work beneath the conversation. The sight of her husband’s mistress had no doubt been disturbing to Jean, who as usual spoke little. It soon became clear that the Templers’ mutual relationship was not an easy one. Different couples approach with varied technique the matrimonial vehicle’s infinitely complicated machinery. In the case of the Templers, their method made it hard to believe that they were really married at all. Clearly each of them was accustomed to a more temporary arrangement. Their conduct was normal enough, but they remained two entirely separate individuals, giving no indication of a life in common. This was certainly not because Templer showed any lack of interest in his wife. On the contrary, he seemed extravagantly, almost obsessively fond of her, although he teased her from time to time. In the past