“But that’s just why they will last. They won’t date.”

“Won’t they? My gum!”

“Wilfrid will last.”

“Ah! Wilfrid has emotions, hates, pities, wants; at least, sometimes; when he has, his stuff is jolly good. Otherwise, he just makes a song about nothing—like the rest.”

Fleur tucked in the top of her undergarment.

“But, Michael, if that’s so, we—I’ve got the wrong lot.”

Michael grinned.

“My dear child! The lot of the hour is always right; only you’ve got to watch it, and change it quick enough.”

“But d’you mean to say that Sibley isn’t going to live?”

“Sib? Lord, no!”

“But he’s so perfectly sure that almost everybody else is dead or dying. Surely he has critical genius!”

“If I hadn’t more judgment than Sib, I’d go out of publishing tomorrow.”

“You—more than Sibley Swan?”

“Of course, I’ve more judgment than Sib. Why! Sib’s judgment is just his opinion of Sib—common or garden impatience of any one else. He doesn’t even read them. He’ll read one specimen of every author and say: ‘Oh! that fellow! He’s dull, or he’s moral, or he’s sentimental, or he dates, or he drivels’—I’ve heard him dozens of times. That’s if they’re alive. Of course, if they’re dead, it’s different. He’s always digging up and canonising the dead; that’s how he’s got his name. There’s always a Sib in literature. He’s a standing example of how people can get taken at their own valuation. But as to lasting—of course he won’t; he’s never creative, even by mistake.”

Fleur had lost the thread. Yes! It suited her—quite a nice line! Off with it! Must write those three notes before she dressed.

Michael had begun again.

“Take my tip, Fleur. The really big people don’t talk—and don’t bunch—they paddle their own canoes in what seem backwaters. But it’s the backwaters that make the main stream. By Jove, that’s a mot, or is it a bull; and are bulls mots or mots bulls?”

“Michael, if you were me, would you tell Frederic Wilmer that he’ll be meeting Hubert Marsland at lunch next week? Would it bring him or would it put him off?”

“Marsland’s rather an old duck, Wilmer’s rather an old goose—I don’t know.”

“Oh! do be serious, Michael—you never give me any help in arranging—No! Don’t maul my shoulders please.”

“Well, darling, I DON’T know. I’ve no genius for such things, like you. Marsland paints windmills, cliffs and things—I doubt if he’s heard of the future. He’s almost a Mathew Mans for keeping out of the swim. If you think he’d like to meet a Vertiginist—”

“I didn’t ask you if he’d like to meet Wilmer; I asked you if Wilmer would like to meet him.”

“Wilmer will just say: ‘I like little Mrs. Mont, she gives deuced good grub’—and so you do, ducky. A Vertiginist wants nourishing, you know, or it wouldn’t go to his head.”

Fleur’s pen resumed its swift strokes, already becoming slightly illegible. She murmured:

“I think Wilfrid would help—you won’t be there; one—two—three. What women?”

“For painters—pretty and plump; no intellect.”

Fleur said crossly:

“I can’t get them plump; they don’t go about now.” And her pen flowed on:

“Michael, your chin is like a bootbrush.”

“Sorry, old thing; your shoulders shouldn’t be so smooth. Bart gave Wilfrid a tip as we were coming along.”

Fleur stopped writing. “Oh!”

“Reminded him that the state of love was a good stunt for poets.”

“A propos of what?”

“Wilfrid was complaining that he couldn’t turn it out now.”

“Nonsense! His last things are his best.”

“Well, that’s what I think. Perhaps he’s forestalled the tip. Has he, d’you know?”

Fleur turned her eyes towards the face behind her shoulder. No, it had its native look—frank, irresponsible, slightly faun-like, with its pointed ears, quick lips, and nostrils.

She said slowly:

“If YOU don’t know, nobody does.”

A snuffle interrupted Michael’s answer. Ting-a-ling, long, low, slightly higher at both ends, was standing between them, with black muzzle upturned. ‘My pedigree is long,’ he seemed to say; ‘but my legs are short—what about it?’

According to a great and guiding principle, Fleur and Michael Mont attended the Hugo Solstis concert, not because they anticipated pleasure, but because they knew Hugo. They felt, besides, that Solstis, an Englishman of Russo–Dutch extraction, was one of those who were restoring English music, giving to it a wide and spacious freedom from melody and rhythm, while investing it with literary and mathematical charms. And one never could go to a concert given by any of this school without using the word ‘interesting’ as one was coming away. To sleep to this restored English music, too, was impossible. Fleur, a sound sleeper, had never even tried. Michael had, and complained afterwards that it had been like a nap in Liege railway station. On this occasion they occupied those gangway seats in the front row of the dress circle of which Fleur had a sort of natural monopoly. There Hugo and the rest could see her taking her place in the English restoration movement. It was easy, too, to escape into the corridor and exchange the word ‘interesting’ with side-whiskered cognoscenti; or, slipping out a cigarette from the little gold case, wedding present of Cousin Imogen Cardigan, get a whiff or two’s repose. To speak quite honestly, Fleur had a natural sense of rhythm which caused her discomfort during those long and ‘interesting’ passages which evidenced, as it were, the composer’s rise and fall from his bed of thorns. She secretly loved a tune, and the impossibility of ever confessing this without losing hold of Solstis, Baff, Birdigal, MacLewis, Clorane, and other English restoration composers, sometimes taxed to its limit a nature which had its Spartan side. Even to Michael she would not ‘confess’; and it was additionally trying when, with his native disrespect of persons, accentuated by life in the trenches and a publisher’s office, he would mutter: “Gad! Get on with it!” or: “Cripes! Ain’t he took bad!” especially as she knew that Michael was really putting up with it better than herself, having a more literary disposition, and a less dancing itch in his toes.

The first movement of the new Solstis composition—‘Phantasmagoria Piemontesque’—to which they had especially come to listen, began with some drawn-out chords. “What oh!” said Michael’s voice in her ear: “Three pieces of furniture moved simultaneously on a parquet floor!”

In Fleur’s involuntary smile was the whole secret of why her marriage had not been intolerable. After all, Michael was a dear! Devotion and mercury—jesting and loyalty—combined, they piqued and touched even a heart given away before it was bestowed on him. ‘Touch’ without ‘pique’ would have bored; ‘pique’ without ‘touch’ would have irritated. At this moment he was at peculiar advantage! Holding on to his knees, with his ears standing up, eyes glassy from loyalty to Hugo, and tongue in cheek, he was listening to that opening in a way which evoked Fleur’s admiration. The piece would be ‘interesting’—she fell into the state of outer observation and inner calculation very usual with her nowadays. Over there was L.S.D., the greater dramatist; she didn’t know him—yet. He looked rather frightening, his hair stood up so straight. And her eye began picturing him on her copper floor against a Chinese picture. And there—yes! Gurdon Minho! Imagine HIS coming to anything so modern! His profile WAS rather Roman—of the Aurelian period! Passing on from that antique, with the pleased thought that by this time tomorrow she might have collected it, she quartered the assembly face by face—she did not want to miss any one important.