“A mythical tale?”

“By God, yes! A mythical tale. Like a god descending on a mortal woman. Do you remember one night when Powell was talking about the plot for this opera, and he was describing how Morgan Le Fay appears two or three times in disguise, and makes mischief?”

“Yes. We had a talk about stage disguise.”

“Arthur said that it had always troubled him in the old plays when somebody puts on a cloak and hat and is accepted by the others as somebody he isn’t. Disguise is impossible, he said. You recognize people by their walk, the way they hold their heads, by a thousand things that we aren’t aware of. How do you disguise your back, he said; none of us can see our backs, but everybody else does, and when you see somebody from the back you may know them much more readily than if you see them face to face. Do you remember what Powell said?”

“Something about people wishing to be deceived?”

“Yes. That you will the deception, just as you will your own deception when you watch a conjuror. He said he had once taken part in a show put on in an asylum for the insane, where a very clever conjuror worked like a dog, and didn’t get any applause whatever. Why? Because the insane were not his partners in his deceits. For them a rabbit might just as well come out of an empty hat as not. But the sane, the doctors and nurses, who were living and watching in the same world of assumptions as the conjuror, were delighted. And it was the same with disguise. On the stage, people accepted somebody in a very transparent disguise because the real reception was brought about by their own will. Show Lancelot and Guenevere a witch, and they accept her as a witch because their situation makes a witch much more acceptable than Morgan Le Fay in a ragged cloak.”

“Yes, I remember. I thought it rather a thin argument at the time.”

“But don’t you remember what he said afterward? We are deceived because we will our own deception. It is somehow necessary to us. It is an aspect of fate.”

“I think I remember. Powell talks a lot of fascinating Celtic moonshine, doesn’t he?”

“You are cynical about Powell because you are jealous of his astonishing powers of persuasion. And if you are in that mood, there’s no point in my going on.”

“Yes, do go on. I’ll promise to suspend my disbelief in Geraint Powell’s ideas.”

“You’d better. Now listen very carefully. About two months ago Powell came to see me about some business. You know he is making contracts with singers and stage people, and he is very scrupulous about showing them to Arthur, or me when Arthur’s away, before he closes his arrangement with the artist. Arthur was away on this particular evening. In Montreal, as he often is, and I didn’t know just when he might come back. That evening, late, or early the next morning. Powell and I worked late, and then we went to bed.”

“Had nothing led up to that?”

“Oh, I don’t mean we went to bed together. Powell often uses a room in our apartment when he is in town late, then he gets up early and drives off to Stratford before breakfast. It’s an established thing, and very convenient for him.”

“So Wally Crottel seemed to think.”

“To hell with Wally Crottel. So—off I went to bed and to sleep, and about two o’clock Arthur came into the room and got into bed with me.”

“Not unusual, I suppose.”

“Not entirely usual, either. Since his illness, Arthur has a room of his own, where he usually sleeps, but of course he comes into my room when it’s sex, you see. So I wasn’t surprised.”

“And it was Arthur?”

“Who else would it be? And it was wearing Arthur’s dressing-gown. You know the one. I gave it to him soon after we were married, and I had it made in King Arthur’s colours and with King Arthur’s device: a green dragon, crowned in red, on a gold shield. You couldn’t mistake it. I could feel the embroidered dragon on the back. He slipped into my bed, opened the dressing-gown, and there we were.”

“All very much according to Hoyle.”

“Yes.”

“Maria, I don’t believe a word of it.”

“But I did. Or a very important part of me did. I took him as Arthur.”

“And did he take you as Arthur?”

“That’s what’s so hard to explain. When a man comes into your very dark room, and you can feel your husband’s dressing-gown that you know so well, and he takes you so wonderfully that all the doubt and dissatisfaction of weeks past melt away, do you ask him to identify himself?”

“He didn’t speak?”

“Not a word. He didn’t need to.”

“Maria, it’s awfully fishy. I’m no great expert but surely there are things you expect and are used to—caresses, sounds, and of course smells. Did he smell like Arthur?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Come on, Maria. That won’t do.”

“Well—yes and no.”

“But you didn’t protest.”

“Does one protest at such a time?”

“No, I don’t suppose one does. I do think I understand, you know.”

“Thanks, Simon. I hoped you might. But one can’t be sure. Men are so incalculable about things like that.”

“You said it all yourself a few minutes ago. It’s a story that roams back through the ages, and it’s a story that doesn’t grow old. It’s the Demon Lover. Have you told Arthur?”

“How can I, when he’s being so restrained and bloody saintly?”

“You’d better try. Arthur understands a lot of things you wouldn’t suspect. And Arthur isn’t perfectly in the clear in this affair. He didn’t tell you what you had a right to know. You and Arthur had better have a divano. Nothing like a good Gypsy divano to clear the air.”

There is a special frustration that afflicts authors when they cannot claim enough time for their own work, and Darcourt was unwontedly irritable because he was not getting on with his life of the late Francis Cornish. The sudden illumination that had struck him in the drawing-room of Princess Amalie and Prince Max demanded to be explored and enlarged, and was he doing that? No, he was involved in the unhappiness of Arthur and Maria, and because he was truly a compassionate man—though he detested what the world thought was compassion—he spent a great deal of time thinking about them and indeed worrying about them. Like most dispensers of wisdom, Darcourt was bad at taking his own medicine. Worrying and fretting will do no good, he told his friends, and then when they had left him he fell into quicksands of worry and fretfulness on their behalf. He was supposed to be enjoying a sabbatical year from his university work, but the professor who does not leave his campus knows that no complete abandonment of responsibility is possible.

There was Penny Raven, for instance. Penny, who seemed to be the complete academic woman, scholarly, well-organized, and sensible, was in a dither about whatever was going on between Schnak and Gunilla Dahl-Soot. What was it? Do you know anything, Simon? Darcourt tried to be patient during her long telephone calls. I know that the Doctor and Schnak are getting on like a house afire with this opera, and are merciless in their demands on me that I should supply new material for the libretto, or change and tinker stuff I have already done: I am in and out of their house at least once a day, fussing over scraps of recitative; I never realized that a librettist lived such a dog’s life. Verdi was an old softy compared with Gunilla. They are working, Penny, working!—Yes, yes, Simon, I realize that, but they can’t work all the time. What is the atmosphere? I hate to think of that poor kid being dragged into something she can’t handle.—The atmosphere is fine: master guiding but not dominating pupil, and pupil blossoming like the rose—well, perhaps not like the rose, but at least putting on a few shy flowers—clean and well-fed and now and then giving a sandy little laugh.—Yes, Simon, but how? What price is being paid?—I don’t know, Penny, and frankly I don’t care because it’s none of my business. I am not a nursemaid. Why don’t you go and see for yourself? You were supposed to be working with me on this libretto and so far you have done sweet-bugger-all.—Oh, but you’re so good at that kind of thing, Simon, and I have this big paper to get ready for the next meeting of the Learned Societies and honestly I haven’t a moment. But I’ll come in at the end and touch up, I promise.—The hell you will, Penny. If I do it there’ll be no touching up. I get all the touching up I need from Nilla, and in English verse she has a touch like a blacksmith.—All right, if you want to disclaim all responsibility for a young person who is supposed to be in your care, at least to some extent.—Not in my care, Penny; if she’s in anybody’s care it is Wintersen’s care, and you won’t get any outraged moral action out of him. And if you insist on sticking your nose in, you may get it punched by Schnak, so I warn you.—Oh, very well. Very well. But I’m worried and disappointed.—Good, Penny; you get right on with that. Meanwhile, do you know a two-syllable word meaning “regret” that isn’t “regret”? Because “regret” isn’t a word that sings well if it has to be matched up with a quarter-note followed by an eighth-note. That’s the kind of thing I have to cope with. Listen—I think I’ve got it! How about “dolour”? Lovely word, right out of Malory, and the accent falls on the first syllable and pips off on the second. Singable! A nice big open vowel followed by a little one.—No, Simon. Won’t do at all. Too olden-timesy and cutesy.—Oh, God, Penny! Get off my back, you—you critic!