Pinky had thought it better not to press this matter any further. They had separated and gone to their several flats, where in due course they made ready for the party.

Anelida and Octavius also made ready. Octavius, having settled for a black coat, striped trousers and the complementary details that he considered appropriate to these garments, had taken up a good deal of his niece’s attention. She had managed to have a bath and was about to dress when, for the fourth time, he tapped at her door and presented himself before her, looking anxious and unnaturally tidy. “My hair,” he said. “Having no unguent, I used a little olive oil. Do I smell like a salad?”

She reassured him, gave his coat a brush and begged him to wait for her in the shop. He had old-fashioned ideas about punctuality and had begun to fret. “It’s five-and-twenty minutes to seven. We were asked for half-past six, Nelly.”

“That means seven at the earliest, darling. Just take a furtive leer through the window and you’ll see when people begin to come. And please, Unk, we can’t go while I’m still in my dressing-gown, can we, now?”

“No, no, of course not. Half-past six for a quarter-to-seven? Or seven? I see. I see. In that case…”

He pottered downstairs.

Anelida thought, “It’s a good thing I’ve had some practice in quick changes.” She did her face and hair, and she put on a white dress that had been her one extravagance of the year, a large white hat with a black velvet crown, and new gloves. She looked in the glass, forcing herself to adopt the examining attitude she used in the theatre. “And it might as well be a first night,” she thought, “the way I’m feeling.” Did Richard like white? she wondered.

Heartened by the certainty of her dress being satisfactory and her hat becoming, Anelida began to daydream along time-honoured lines: She and Octavius arrived at the party. There was a sudden hush. Monty Marchant, the Management in person, would ejaculate to Timon Gantry, the great producer, “Who are they?” and Timon Gantry, with the abrupt gasp which all actors, whether they had heard it or not, liked to imitate, would reply, “I don’t know but by God, I’m going to find out.” The ranks would part as she and Octavius, escorted by Miss Bellamy, moved down the room to the accompaniment of a discreet murmur. They would be the cynosure of all eyes. What was a cynosure and why was it never mentioned except in reference to eyes? All eyes on Anelida Lee. And there, wrapt in admiration, would be Richard…

At this point Anelida stopped short, was stricken with shame, had a good laugh at herself and became the prey of her own nerves.

She went to her window and looked down into Pardoner’s Place. Cars were now beginning to draw up at Miss Bellamy’s house. Here came a large black one with a very smart chauffeur. Two men got out. Anelida’s inside somersaulted. The one with the gardenia was Monty Marchant and that incredibly tall, that unmistakably shabby figure was the greatest of all directors, Timon Gantry.

“Whoops!” Anelida said. “None of your nonsense, Cinderella.” She counted sixty and then went downstairs.

Octavius was seated at his desk, reading, and Hodge was on his knee. They both looked extraordinarily smug.

“Have you come over calm?” Anelida asked.

“What? Calm? Yes,” Octavius said. “Perfectly, thank you. I have been reading The Gull’s Hornbook.”

“Have you been up to something, Unk?”

He rolled his eyes round at her. “Up to something? I? What can you mean?”

“You look as if butter wouldn’t melt on your whiskers.”

“Really? I wonder why. Should we go?”

He displaced Hodge, who was moulting. Anelida was obliged to fetch the clothesbrush again.

“I wouldn’t change you,” she said, “for the Grand Cham of Tartary. Come on, darling, let’s go.”

Miss Bellamy’s preparation for the party occupied the best part of ninety minutes and had something of the character of a Restoration salon, with Florence, truculently unaware of this distinction, in the role of abigail.

It followed the after-luncheon rest and, in its early stages, was conducted in the strictest privacy. She lay on her bed. Florence, unspeaking and tight-mouthed, darkened the room and produced from the bathroom sundry bottles and pots. She removed the make-up from her mistress’s face, put wet pads over her eyes and began to apply a layer of greenish astringent paste. Miss Bellamy attempted to make conversation and was unsuccessful. At last she demanded impatiently, “What’s the matter with you? Gone upstage?” Florence was silent. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” Miss Bellamy ejaculated. “You’re not holding out on me because of this morning, are you?”

Florence slapped a layer across Miss Bellamy’s upper lip. “That stuff’s stinging me,” Miss Bellamy mumbled with difficulty. “You haven’t mixed it properly.”

Florence completed the mask. From behind it Miss Bellamy attempted to say, “All right, you can go to hell and sulk there,” but remembering she was not supposed to speak, lay fuming. She heard Florence go out of the room. Ten minutes later she returned, stood for some time looking down on the greenish, blinded face and then set about removing the mask.

The toilet continued in icy silence, proceeding through its manifold and exacting routines. The face was scrutinized like a microscope slide. The hair was drilled. The person was subjected to masterful but tactful discipline. That which, unsubjected, declared itself centrally, was forced to make a less aggressive reappearance above the seventh rib where it was trapped, confined and imperceptibly distributed. And throughout these intimate manipulations, Florence and Miss Bellamy maintained an absolute and inimical silence. Only when they had been effected did Miss Bellamy open her door to her court.

In the past, Pinky and Bertie had attended: the former vaguely in the role of confidante, the latter to advise about the final stages of the ritual. Today they had not presented themselves and Miss Bellamy was illogically resentful. Though her initial fury had subsided, it lay like a sediment at the bottom of her thoughts and it wouldn’t take much, she realized, to stir it up.

Charles was the first to arrive and found her already dressed. She wore crimson chiffon, intricately folded and draped with loose panels that floated tactfully past her waist and hips. The décolletage plunged and at its lowest point contained orchids and diamonds. Diamonds appeared again at intervals in the form of brooches and clips, flashed in stalactites from her ears and encircled her neck and wrist in a stutter of brilliance. She was indeed magnificent.

“Well?” she said and faced her husband.

“My dear!” said Charles gently. “I’m overwhelmed.”

Something in his voice irritated her. “You don’t like it,” she said. “What’s the matter with it?”

“It’s quite superb. Dazzling.”

Florence had opened the new bottle of scent and was pouring it into the Venetian glass atomizer. The air was thickened with effluvium so strong that it almost gave the impression of being visible. Charles made the slightest of grimaces.

“Do you think I’m overdressed, Charles?” Miss Bellamy demanded.

“I have implicit faith in your judgment,” he said. “And you look glorious.”

“Why did you make a face?”

“It’s that scent. I find it a bit too much. It’s — well…”

“Well! What is it?”

“I fancy indecent is the word I’m groping for.”

“It happens to be the most exclusive perfume on the market.”

“I don’t much like the word ‘perfume’ but in this case it seems to be entirely appropriate.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a high voice, “that you find my choice of words non-U.”

“My dear Mary…!”

Florence screwed the top on the atomizer and placed it, with the three-quarters emptied bottle, on the dressing-table. She then retired to the bathroom.