“I fully understand the compassionate grounds for a hasty decision,” said Pfeiffer; “but in my experience compassionate grounds are rarely sound grounds, and I should like to feel that this examination has been completed in proper form. Frankly, I should like to defer a decision for a week, during which we should attend at least two more performances.”

“Sorry to sound like a dean,” said Wintersen, “but I really must overrule you, Professor. I shall call for a vote, naming the examiners in alphabetical order. Professor Berger?”

The vote was six for acceptance of the degree, Professor Pfeiffer abstaining, and the Dean forgoing his privilege of casting a vote. The examination was over, and Schnak, dead or alive, was therewith a Doctor of Music.

The Cornishes took over. Darcourt was asked to take the examiners to dinner, as they had been detained so long. Gunilla announced her determination to go to the hospital at once, with Arthur and Maria. Professor Pfeiffer said he didn’t want any dinner, but this deceived no one. The singers were shooed off to their dressing-rooms, big with the drama of the afternoon.

Geraint called Waldo and Gwen to him, and set about a long budget of notes he had taken during what was, to him, a disappointing and tediously delayed rehearsal. He would show proper emotion, he said, when everything was shipshape and Bristol fashion.

What would a stranger make of this room, if he should happen in here by mistake, thought Darcourt. A beautiful young mother sits in the dim light of the only lamp, suckling her child; the long dressing-robe she wears might belong to any time during the past two thousand years. There are two very large beds in the room and in one of them, under the heavy coverlet, lie two women; one in early middle age and of distinguished, hawk-like face and the other softly pretty, her dark eyes full of mischief. The older woman’s arm is around the neck of her companion, and caresses it. In the second bed I lie myself, fully dressed except for my shoes, and beside me lies a man of great beauty and palpable energy; his open shirt-collar and longish curly dark hair might belong to any time during the last two hundred and fifty years. We too are partly covered, for the August night is chilly, but there is no affectionate link between us. The only other figure in the room is the man whose back is turned to us; he stands at the dressing-table, which has been turned into a pretty well-stocked bar.

The room itself? It looks as if one of those half-timbered houses, perhaps from Stratford-on-Avon or Gloucestershire, had been turned inside out. Dark beams appear to support a structure of lumpy white plaster. This style of interior finish is intended, undoubtedly, as a compliment to the Shakespeare Festival which is the chief glory of this town.

This is Maria and Arthur’s room in the motel where they have been staying, intermittently, for the past three weeks observing—so far as they have been made welcome to observe—the completion of all the preparations for the presentation of Arthur of Britain, and they are entertaining Gunilla, and Dulcy Ringgold, and Geraint and myself. It is ten o’clock at night. We are gathered to talk about the strange behaviour of Hulda—henceforth and forever Doctor Hulda—Schnakenburg, who was borne from her doctoral examination on a stretcher a few hours earlier.

All things considered, the intruding stranger might think it an odd scene, a mixture of the domestic and the reposeful. Or was it some muddle of group sex, arranged for observers of peculiar tastes?

“She’s going to be all right,” said Arthur, turning to give Gunilla another strong Scotch. “But it’s bound to be a little bit embarrassing when she rejoins us. The hospital people want her for a couple of days at least. Her digestive tract has suffered what they call serious insult. They’ve been swilling her out.”

“Little fool,” said Gunilla. “Nearly a hundred Aspirin and half a bottle of gin. Where would she have got the idea that it would kill her?”

“She didn’t mean to kill herself,” said Arthur. “It was what it is now fashionable to call a gesture of despair.”

“No, no, don’t patronize her,” said Gunilla. “She meant to kill herself, undoubtedly. She was just badly informed, as many suicides are.”

“You must admit she made a very effective scene out of it,” said Dulcy. “I was moved. Blubbed quite a lot, I confess it without shame.”

“She saw herself as Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat,” said Maria. “Dying of love for the faithless Lancelot. Hulda has learned a great deal from this opera, quite apart from the music. She did it to make you feel cheap, Geraint, just as Elaine made Lancelot feel cheap. Now, Davy my pet, time to change sides.” She shifted the feeding child to her other breast.

“Do all babies make that slurping noise when they are feeding?” said Geraint.

“It’s a very nice noise, and no impertinent questions from you, my lad. You’re in the doghouse.”

“I’m damned if I’m in the doghouse,” said Geraint. “You can’t blame me. I won’t put up with it.”

“You’ll have to put up with it,” said Dulcy. “Of course it’s unjust, but who are you to escape all of the world’s injustice? This is one of those cases where the female side in the great struggle undoubtedly wins. You scorned her love, which God knows was obvious enough, and she tried to kill herself. Doghouse for you. Bitter shame upon you, Geraint Powell, you heart-breaker, for not less than two weeks.”

“Bullshit!”

“Coarseness ill becomes a man in your position. You are cast as the haughty, gallant, gay Lothario, and if you have any dramatic sense at all—which is what you’re paid to have—you will play the part to the hilt.”

“Is nobody on my side? Sim bach, say a few eloquent words in my defence. How am I to blame?”

“Well, to be totally fair and even-handed, Geraint, I have seen you, now and then, casting inflammatory smiles in her direction.”

“I smile at everybody, particularly when I don’t mean anything by it. Perhaps I smiled—a meaningless grimace of courtesy—at Schnak now and then when she kept getting under my feet. I swear upon the soul of my dear mother, now adding a fine mezzo to the heavenly choir, that I meant nothing, nothing whatever, by it. I smile at you Nilla, and at you, Dulcy, and God knows I don’t expect it to get me anywhere, you horrible old dykes.”

“Dykes!” said Gunilla indignantly. “How dare you use such a word to me—to us. You are a boor, Geraint.”

“Isn’t he a boor, Nilla? That’s precisely what he is. A boor.

Shakespeare, freely adapted for the occasion.” Dulcy was enjoying herself greatly. Indignation and Scotch were working strongly inside her.

“She didn’t love me, even if she thought she did.”

“It comes to the same thing.”

“Yes, I fear it does,” said Darcourt. “Poor old Schnak was in the grip of one of the great errors of the frenzied lover. She thought because she loved, she could provoke love in return. Everybody does it, at some time. I speak as the voice of calm reason.”

“And you ignored her cruelly,” said Arthur. “Doghouse for you, Geraint.”

“I suppose I must make a statement,” said Geraint. “What I am about to say does not spring from vanity, but from bitter experience. Listen to me, all of you. Since I was but a winsome lad, women have insisted on falling for me. It has something to do with chemistry, I suppose. Chemistry and the fact (which I state without any vanity whatever) that I am absurdly good-looking. Result, a lot of trouble for me. But am I to blame? I refuse to accept blame. Are beautiful women to blame because men fall for them? Is Maria to blame because just about everybody who sees her falls in love with her, or at least looks upon her to lust after her? I’ll bet that even Sim bach, bloodless old turnip though he is, loves Maria. Can Maria help it? The idea is too ridiculous for discussion. So why am I to blame because Schnak, who is emotionally warped and retarded, gets silly notions about me? My beauty has been a large part of my success as an actor, and I tell you I’m bloody sick of it. That’s why I want to get out of acting and into directing. I will not be sighed at and lallygagged over by audiences of hungry females. I have too keen an intelligence to value such admiration, which is simply aroused by the Livery of Hell—my physical appearance. I am close to middle age, and my beauty is giving way to a ravaged distinction. I have a gammy leg. So perhaps I can look forward to the remainder of my life in peace.”