Finally—no, not quite finally—there was the woman who stood beside the bridal couple, the only figure in the picture graced with a halo. The Mother of God? Yes, for the convention in which the picture was cast demanded that. But more probably the Mighty Mother of All. As the mother of everybody and everything, it was not necessary for her to look like anyone in particular. Her grave beauty was universal and her smile was of a serenity that rose beyond earthly considerations.

Was that serene smile intended to heal the hurt that was visible in the portraits of the bride and groom, in which the man extended a ring toward the fourth finger of his bride’s left hand, and she seemed to be holding back, or perhaps withdrawing her hand from what he offered? To Darcourt, knowing what he knew, and immersed as he was in all the Sun Pictures and the innumerable copies, sketches, and finished drawings that were all that remained of the truth of Francis Cornish’s life, it seemed as if this extraordinary picture was an allegory of a man’s ruin, of the destruction of his spirit. Had the wilful bolter Ismay really hurt him so deeply? After this picture, Francis had never painted seriously again.

The poet who wrote that, and all the easy philosophy of love that follows it, was a hardier soul than Francis. But not all men, or all lovers, are hardy souls. It seemed to Darcourt that Francis had not died because of Ismay’s determination to follow her own star, but something within him had suffered mortal hurt, and the death that had overtaken him so many years afterward, when he died alone in his cluttered flat, was a second death, and it was not in Darcourt’s power to say which had been the most significant cessation of being.

Darcourt would readily have admitted that he did not know much about love. He had had no youthful affairs, except in a superficial sense. His love for Maria, which he now knew to have been a folly from which he was lucky to escape, was all that he had known of passion. But he had the gift, not often given to deeply passionate men, to understand the joys and also the heart-stopping blows of fate that afflicted other people. The more he looked at the large reproduction, and also the detailed pictures of portions of The Marriage at Cana that accompanied Aylwin Ross’s brilliant, wholly mistaken article in Apollo, the more he wondered if Maria, now great with Geraint Powell’s child, had struck just such a blow to Arthur Cornish. Arthur was holding up very well, if that were true, but he had lost all débonnaireté. Arthur was certainly The Magnanimous Cuckold. But Arthur was not the clearly defined, generous, but ruthless spirit he had been when Darcourt first knew him. If it were so, who was to blame? The more Darcourt knew, the less he was inclined to blame or praise.

The final figure in the picture, however, had to await the spring before it could be identified, so far as possible, forever.

That was the angel who floated in the air over the heads of the bridal pair and the Mighty Mother in the central panel of the triptych. Perhaps it was not quite an angel, but if not, why was it suspended in air, without angelic wings? The first time one looked at the picture it seemed to throw the whole composition into confusion. Whereas the other figures were human, painted with love, and sometimes beautiful, sometimes noble, sometimes self-satisfied, sometimes—old St. Simon was such a portrait—as wise beyond worldly wisdom, this floating creature was a comic horror. Its pointed head, its almost idiotic expression, its suggestion of disorder of mind and deformity of body, were all out of key with the rest. And yet, the more one looked, the more it seemed to belong, to be almost necessary to whatever it was the whole composition was saying.

From its mouth came a scroll, suggesting one of the balloons that hold the words in a comic strip, and in the scroll were the words To autem servasti bonum vinum usque adhuc. Not very elegant as Latin, but the words spoken to the bridegroom by the governor of the feast at the Marriage at Cana: “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Christ’s first miracle; a puzzle, for nothing in the Gospel suggests that anyone but Christ and His Mother and a few servants knew the secret.

Was this picture, then, as well as an object of great beauty, a puzzle? A joke, a deeply serious joke, on future beholders?

April brought the answer, as Darcourt had hoped it would. He made the inconvenient train journey to Blairlogie and, armed with a shovel, a broom, and his camera, he went to the Catholic cemetery and there, high on the bleak hill, he visited once again the McRory family plot. It was dominated by large, tasteless stones commemorating the Senator and his wife, and Mary-Benedetta McRory. But there were a few humbler markers, one of them not a gravestone but a memorial to somebody called Zadok Hoyle, identified as a faithful servant of the family. And—here it was—in an obscure corner behind the biggest stone was a small marble marker, flat to the ground, and when Darcourt had cleared away the last lingering snow and ice, and an accumulation of lichen, it read, plainly, FRANCIS.

So: here it was. Among the sketches from Francis’s boyhood years there were a number of an invalid figure, confined to a bed which was almost a cage; the figure in the bed was a pitiable deformity, of the sort that cruel people used to call a pinhead, blank of eye, sparse of hair, and wearing an expression, to use the word loosely, that would draw pity from the heart of an ogre. These sketches, rapid but vivid, were identified only by the letter F, except for one on which was laboriously written, in the hand of a boy who wished to be a calligrapher but did not yet know how, what seemed to have been copied from some royal signature, François Premier.

Francis the First? Now, thought Darcourt, I know all I need to know, and all I am ever likely to know. Truly the best wine has been kept until the last.

“The crones are coming,” said Dean Wintersen’s voice down the telephone. “They are expected today.”

What crones? Was this some uncanny visitation of weird old women? What crones? Darcourt had been roused from his work on the biography of the late Francis Cornish, and his mind did not readily shift to the Dean’s concern. The crones? Oh, yes! Of course! The Cranes. Had he not agreed that some people called Crane should come from an American West Coast university to do something or other of a vaguely defined order about the production of the opera? That had been months ago and, having so agreed, and having it well understood that the Cranes were not to cost the Cornish Foundation anything, he had banished the Cranes from his mind, as a problem to be dealt with when it arose. Now, it appeared, the Cranes were coming.

“You remember them, of course,” said the Dean.

“Remind me,” said Darcourt.

“They’re the assessors from Pomelo U.,” said the Dean. “It was agreed they should sit in on the production of the opera. You remember the opera, don’t you?”

Oh, yes; Darcourt remembered the opera. Had he not been slaving over the libretto for the past four months?

“But what are they going to assess?” said Darcourt.

“The whole affair. Everything connected with the opera from Schnak’s work on the score to the last detail of getting the thing on the stage. And then the critical and public reaction.”

“But why?”

“To get Al Crane his Ph.D., of course. He’s an opera major in the theatre school at Pomelo, and when he has got his assessment together he will make a Regiebuch and present it as his thesis.”

“His what?”

“His Regiebuch. A German expression. All the dope on the production of the opera will be in it.”