“I have a feeling that she may not be finding life very easy.”

Her eyes met his.

“That’s what I thought at the wedding, Uncle; I didn’t like his face.”

“You have a special gift for helping others, Dinny; and whatever’s wrong about Christianity, it’s not the saying ‘To give is more blessed than to receive.’”

“Even the Son of Man liked His little joke, Uncle.”

Adrian looked at her hard, and said:

“Well, if you do go to Ceylon, mind you eat your mangoes over a basin.”

He parted from her a little later and, too much out of mood to go back to work, went to the Horse Show instead.

At South Square The Daily Phase was among those journals which politicians take lest they should miss reading correctly the temperature of Fleet Street. Michael pushed it over to Fleur at breakfast.

During the six days since Dinny’s arrival neither of them had said a word to her on the subject of Wilfrid; and it was Dinny who now said: “May I see that?”

Fleur handed her the paper. She read, gave a little shudder, and went on with her breakfast. Kit broke the ensuing hush by stating Hobbs’ average. Did Aunt Dinny think he was as great as W. G. Grace?

“I never saw either of them, Kit.”

“Didn’t you see W. G.?”

“I think he died before I was born.”

Kit scrutinised her doubtfully.

“Oh!”

“He died in 1915,” said Michael: “You’d have been eleven.”

“But haven’t you really seen Hobbs, Auntie?”

“No.”

“I’VE seen him three times. I’m practising his hook to leg. The Daily Phase says Bradman is the best batsman in the world now. Do you think he’s better than Hobbs?”

“Better news than Hobbs.”

Kit stared.

“What is ‘news’?”

“What newspapers are for.”

“Do they make it up?”

“Not always.”

“What news were you reading just now?”

“Nothing that would interest you.”

“How do you know?”

“Kit, don’t worry!” said Fleur.

“May I have an egg?”

“Yes.”

The hush began again, till Kit stopped his eggspoon in midair and isolated a finger:

“Look! The nail’s blacker than it was yesterday. Will it come off, Auntie?”

“How did you do that?”

“Pinched it in a drawer. I didn’t cry.”

“Don’t boast, Kit.”

Kit gave his mother a clear upward look and resumed his egg.

Half an hour later, when Michael was just settling down to his correspondence, Dinny came into his study.

“Busy, Michael?”

“No, my dear.”

“That paper! Why can’t they leave him alone?”

“You see The Leopard is selling like hot cakes. Dinny, how do things stand now?”

“I know he’s been having malaria, but I don’t even know where or how he is.”

Michael looked at her face, masked in its desperate little smile, and said, hesitatingly:

“Would you like me to find out?”

“If he wants me, he knows where I am.”

“I’ll see Compson Grice. I’m not lucky with Wilfrid himself.”

When she was gone he sat staring at the letters he had not begun to answer, half dismayed, half angered. Poor dear Dinny! What a shame! Pushing the letters aside, he went out.

Compson Grice’s office was near Covent Garden, which, for some reason still to be discovered, attracts literature. When Michael reached it, about noon, that young publisher was sitting in the only well-furnished room in the building, with a newspaper cutting in his hand and a smile on his lips. He rose and said: “Hallo, Mont! Seen this in The Phase?”

“Yes.”

“I sent it round to Desert, and he wrote that at the top and sent it back. Neat, eh!”

Michael read in Wilfrid’s writing:

“Whene’er the lord who rules his roosts

Says: ‘Bite!’ he bites, says: ‘Boost!’ he boosts.”

“He’s in town, then?”

“Was half an hour ago.”

“Have you seen him at all?”

“Not since the book came out.”

Michael looked shrewdly at that comely fattish face. “Satisfied with the sales?”

“We’re in the forty-first thousand, and going strong.”

“I suppose you don’t know whether Wilfrid is returning to the East?”

“Haven’t the least little idea.”

“He must be pretty sick with the whole thing.”

Compson Grice shrugged.

“How many poets have ever made a thousand pounds out of a hundred pages of verse?”

“Small price for a soul, Grice.”

“It’ll be two thousand before we’ve done.”

“I always thought it a mistake to print The Leopard. Since he did it I’ve defended it, but it was a fatal thing to do.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Obviously. It’s done you proud.”

“You can sneer,” said Grice, with some feeling, “but he wouldn’t have sent it to me if he hadn’t wished it to come out. I am not my brother’s keeper. The mere fact that it turns out a scoop is nothing to the point.”

Michael sighed.

“I suppose not; but this is no joke for him. It’s his whole life.”

“Again, I don’t agree. That happened when he recanted to save himself being shot. This is expiation, and damned good business into the bargain. His name is known to thousands who’d never heard of it.”

“Yes,” said Michael, brooding, “there is that, certainly. Nothing like persecution to keep a name alive. Grice, will you do something for me? Make an excuse to find out what Wilfrid’s intentions are. I’ve put my foot into it with him and can’t go myself, but I specially want to know.”

“H’m!” said Grice. “He bites.”

Michael grinned. “He won’t bite his benefactor. I’m serious. Will you?”

“I’ll try. By the way, there’s a book by that French Canadian I’ve just published. Top-hole! I’ll send you a copy—your wife will like it.” ‘And,’ he added to himself, ‘talk about it.’ He smoothed back his sleek dark hair and extended his hand. Michael shook it with a little more warmth than he really felt and went away.

‘After all,’ he thought, ‘what is it to Grice except business? Wilfrid’s nothing to him! In these days we have to take what the gods send.’ And he fell to considering what was really making the public buy a book not concerned with sex, memoirs, or murders. The Empire! The prestige of the English! He did not believe it. No! What was making them buy it was that fundamental interest which attached to the question how far a person might go to save his life without losing what was called his soul. In other words, the book was being sold by that little thing—believed in some quarters to be dead—called Conscience. A problem posed to each reader’s conscience, that he could not answer easily; and the fact that it had actually happened to the author brought it home to the reader that some awful alternative might at any moment be presented to himself. And what would he do then, poor thing? And Michael felt one of those sudden bursts of consideration and even respect for the public which often came over him and so affected his more intelligent friends that they alluded to him as ‘Poor Michael!’

So meditating, he reached his room at the House of Commons, and had settled down to the consideration of a private bill to preserve certain natural beauties when a card was brought to him:

“Can you see me?”

Pencilling: “Delighted, sir!” he handed the card back to the attendant and got up. Of all his uncles he knew Dinny’s father least, and he waited with some trepidation.

The General came in, saying:

“Regular rabbit-warren this, Michael.”

He had the confirmed neatness of his profession, but his face looked worn and worried.

“Luckily we don’t breed here, Uncle Con.”

The General emitted a short laugh.

“No, there’s that. I hope I’m not interrupting you. It’s about Dinny. She still with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

The General hesitated, and then, crossing his hands on his stick, said firmly:

“You’re Desert’s best friend, aren’t you?”