Darcourt picked up a large book from her workbench.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Oh, that’s my darling and my deario, James Robinson Planché; his Encyclopaedia of Costume, a revolutionary book in stage design. He was the first man, believe it or not, who really cared if stage dress had any roots in the realities of the past. He designed the first King John that really looked like King John’s time. I don’t copy his pictures, of course. Strictly accurate historical costume looks absurd, as a usual thing, but dear Planché is a springboard for one’s imagination.”

“I don’t suppose even Planché knew what King Arthur wore,” said Darcourt.

“No, but he would have given a jolly well-informed guess,” said Dulcy, patting the two large books tenderly. “So I load up on dear Planché, and then I guess too. Lots of dragons; that’s the stuff for Arthur. I’m putting Morgan Le Fay in a dragon head-dress. Sounds corny, but it won’t be when I’ve finished with it.”

So: the omnicompetent Planché is going to have a finger in the pie, even if we don’t use his horrible libretto, thought Darcourt. He was—just a little—losing his heart to Dulcy, but so was every other man who came near her. It appeared, however, that Dulcy was somewhat of Gunilla’s way of thinking about sex, and although she flirted outrageously with the men, it was with Gunilla she went to dinner.

Here is a world where sex is not of first, second, or perhaps even third importance, thought Darcourt. How refreshing.

Sex was, however, rearing its wistfully domestic head with the unhappy Mabel Muller. The weather in Stratford proved to be just as hot as it was in Toronto, and Mabel’s legs swelled, and her hair drooped, and she bore her burden of posterity with visible effort. She tagged everywhere after Al, who was like a man possessed, making notes here, and taking photographs with an instant camera there, and getting in everyone’s way while making obstructive efforts to avoid doing precisely that. Not that Al forgot her or excluded her; he gave her his heavy briefcase to carry, and they always ate the sandwiches Mabel brought from a fast-food shop together, while he harangued—”extrapolated” was the fine word he used—on all that he had noted, or photographed.

“This is pure gold, Sweetness,” he would say from time to time. To Sweetness it was fairy gold, no sooner touched than lost.

It would be unjust to say that Al grudged the time needed to rush Mabel to the hospital when at last her pains became too much to be ignored. “They’re coming every twenty minutes now,” she whispered, tearfully, and Al made just one more essential note before seizing her by the arm and leading her out of the rehearsal room. It was Darcourt who found them a taxi and urged the driver to lose no time in getting them to the hospital. They had made no arrangements, had not even seen a doctor, and Mabel was admitted in Emergency.

“Something is not quite right with Mabel,” said Maria, later in the day, to Darcourt. “Her pains have stopped.”

“Al was back for the end of the rehearsal,” said Darcourt. “I thought everything must be going smoothly.”

“I’d like to brain Al,” said Maria. “That’s the trouble with these irregular unions. No guts when the going is rough. I’d hang around the hospital if I could, but Arthur has to get back to his office for a couple of days and I am going with him. New developments in the Wally Crottel affair. I’ll tell you later. There’s really nothing for us to do here. Geraint seems to feel that we’re underfoot.”

“I am sure not.”

“I’m sure yes. But Simon, will you be a darling and keep an eye on Mabel? She’s no concern of ours, but I’m concerned just the same. Will you get in touch if we should do anything?”

That was why Darcourt found himself in the comfortless waiting-room of the hospital’s maternity ward at four o’clock in the morning. Al had left at half past ten, promising to phone early next day. Darcourt was not alone. Dr. Dahl-Soot had also turned up, after Al’s departure.

“Nothing could be less in my line than this,” she said. “But that poor wretch is a stranger in a strange land, and so am I, so here I am.”

Darcourt knew better than to say it was very good of her. “Arthur and Maria asked me to keep an eye on things,” he said.

“I like those two,” said the Doctor. “I didn’t greatly like them when we first met, but they grow better on acquaintance. They are a very solid pair. Do you think it’s the baby?”

“Partly the baby. A very fine baby. Maria is suckling it.”

“She is? That’s old style. But I believe very good.”

“I don’t know,” said Darcourt. “As we academics say, it’s not my field. But its a very pretty sight.”

“You are a softy, Simon. And that’s as it should be. I wouldn’t give a damn for a man who was not a softy in some ways.”

“Gunilla, do you think we single people are apt to be sentimental about love and babies and all that?”

“I am not sentimental about anything. But I have sentiment about many things. That’s an English-language difference that is very useful. Not to have sentiment is to be almost dead.”

“But you have taken—pardon me for saying so—a decidedly anti-baby road.”

“Simon, you are too intelligent a man to be as provincial as you sometimes pretend. You know there is room in the world for everything and every kind of life. What do you think marriage is? Just babies and eating off the same fork?”

“God forbid! Because it’s either very early in the morning or very late at night, I’ll tell you what I really think. Marriage isn’t just domesticity, or the continuance of the race, or institutionalized sex, or a form of property right. And it damned well isn’t happiness, as that word is generally used. I think it’s a way of finding your soul.”

“In a man or a woman?”

“With a man or a woman. In company, but still, essentially, alone—as all life is.”

“Then why haven’t you found your own soul?”

“Oh, it isn’t the only way. But it’s one way.”

“So you think I might find my soul, some day?”

“I’d bet very heavily on it, Gunilla. People find their souls in all sorts of ways. I’m writing a book—the life of a very good friend of mine, who certainly found his soul. Found it in painting. He tried to find it in marriage, and it was the most awful mess, because he was a soppy romantic at the time, and she was one of those Sirens who inevitably leave the man with a cup of Siren tears. Rather a crook, judged by the usual standards. But in that mess Francis Cornish found his soul. I know it. I have evidence of it. I’m writing my book about it.”

“Francis Cornish? One of these Cornishes?”

“Arthur’s uncle. And it’s Francis’s money that is supporting this fantastic circus we are engaged in now.”

“But you think this Arthur will find his soul in his marriage?”

“And Maria, too. And if you want to know, I think King Arthur found his soul, or a big piece of it, in his marriage to Guenevere—who was rather a crook, if you read Malory—and that is what a lot of this opera is about. Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold. He found his soul.”

“But is this Arthur a magnanimous cuckold?”

Darcourt did not need to answer, for at this moment a doctor, in his white garment and cap, came into the room.

“Are you with Mrs. Muller?”

“Yes. What’s the news?”

“I’m very sorry. Are you the father?”

“No. Just a friend.”

“Well—it’s bad. The child is stillborn.”

“What was the trouble?”

“She seems not to have had any pre-natal advice whatever. Otherwise we’d have done a Caesarian. But when we found out the foetus had a disproportionately large head for the birth canal, it was already dead. Death from foetal distress, it’s called. We’re very sorry, but these things do happen. And as I say, she hadn’t had any previous medical attention.”

“May we see her?”