“What the hell did you mean by that?”

“We’re not as young as we was, sir, are we? ‘You don’t want to talk silly,’ I said. ‘Questing’s one thing and my gentleman’s another.’ But no. ‘You’re no better than a flunkey,’ he says. ‘You’re demeaning yourself.’ I straightened him up about that. ‘There’s none of the blooming valley about me,’ I says, ‘I’m a dresser and make-up, and what I do on the side is done by me own choice. I’m in the game with my gentleman.’ ‘It’s greed for money,’ he howls, ‘that’s ruining the world. Big business started this war,’ he says, ‘and when we’ve won it us chaps that did the fighting are going to have a say in the way things are run. The Questings’ll be wiped right off the slate.’ That’s the way he talks, you see, sir. Mind, I feel sorry for him. He’s got the idea that his dad and ma are going to just about conk out over this business and to his way of thinking Questing’s as good as a murderer. He says Smith knows something about Questing and that’s why he had to jump for it when the train came. You’ve had fifteen minutes on them muscles and that’ll do you.”

“You’ve damned nearly flayed me alive.”

“Yes,” said Colly, flinging a blanket over his victim and going into the next room to wash his hands. “He’s morbid, is young Sim. And of course Mr. Questing’s little attempts at the funny business with Miss Barbara kind of put the pot on it.”

Dikon, who had been clattering his typewriter, paused.

“What’s that?” said Gaunt, suddenly alert.

“Had you missed the funny business, sir?” said Colly from the next room. “Oh, yes. Quite a bit of trouble she has with him, I understand.”

“What did I tell you, Dikon?”

“The way I look at it,” Colly went on, appearing in the doorway with a towel, “she’s capable. No getting away from it, and you can’t get domestic labour in this country without you pay the earth, so Questing thinks he’ll do better to keep her when the old people go.”

“But damn it,” Dikon said angrily, “this is insufferable. It’s revolting.”

“That’s right, Mr. Bell. That’s what young Sim thinks. He’s worked it out. Questing’ll try putting in the fine work, making out he’ll look after the old people if she sees it in the right light. Coo! It’s a touch of the old blood-and-thunder dope isn’t it, sir? Mortgage and all. The villain still pursued her. Only the juvenile to cast, and there, as we say in The Dream, sir, is a play fitted. I used to enjoy them old pieces.”

“You talk too much, Colly,” said Gaunt mildly.

“That’s right, sir. Beg pardon, I’m sure. Associating with young Mr. Claire must have brought out the latent democracy in me soul. I tell him there’s no call to worry about his sister. ‘It’s easy seen she hates his guts,’ I said, if you’ll excuse me.”

“I’ll excuse you altogether. I’m going to work.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Colly neatly, and closed the door.

He would perhaps have been gratified if he had known how accurately his speculations about Barbara were to be realized. It was on that same evening, a Thursday, nine days before the Maori concert, that Questing decided to carry forward his hitherto tentative approach to Barbara. He chose the time when, wearing a shabby bathing dress and a raincoat, she went for her four-o’clock swim in the warm lake. Her attitude towards public bathing had been settled for her by her mother. Mrs. Claire was nearly forty when Barbara was born, and her habit of mind was Victorian. She herself had grown up in an age when one ducked furtively in the ocean, surrounded by the heavy bell of one’s braided serge. She felt apprehensive whenever she saw her daughter drop her raincoat and plunge hastily into the lake clad in the longest and most conservative garment obtainable at the Harpoon Co-operative Stores. Only once did Barbara attempt to make a change in this procedure. Stimulated by some pre-war magazine photographs of fashionable nudities on the Lido, she thought of sun-bathing, of strolling in a leisurely, even a seductive manner down to the lake, not covered by her raincoat. She showed the magazines to her mother. Mrs. Claire looked at the welter of oiled limbs, glistening lips and greased eyelids. “I know, dear,” she said turning pink. “So very common. Of course newspaper photographers would never persuade the really, really quite to be taken, so I suppose they are obliged to fall back on these people.”

“But Mummy, they’re not ‘these people’! Look, there’s…”

“Barbara darling,” said Mrs. Claire in her special voice, “some day you will understand that there are folk who move in rather loud and vulgar sets, and who may seem to be very exciting, and who I expect are all very rich. But, my dear,” Mrs. Claire had added, gently, exhibiting a photograph of an enormously obese peer in bathing shorts, supported on the one hand by a famous coryphée and on the other by a fashionable prize-fighter — “my dear, they are not Our Sort.” And she had given Barbara a bright smile and a kiss, and Barbara had stuck to her raincoat. On the occasion of his proposal, Mr. Questing, who did not care for sitting on the ground, took a camp-stool to the far end of the lake, placed it behind some manuka scrub near the diving board, and, fortified by a cigar, sat there until he spied Barbara leaving the house. He then discarded the cigar, waited until she was within a few feet of his hiding place, and stepped out to meet her.

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Questing. “Look who’s here! How’s the young lady?”

Barbara clawed the raincoat about her and said she was very well.

“That’s fine,” said Mr. Questing. “Feeling good, eh? That’s the great little lass.” He laughed boisterously and manoeuvred in an agile manner in order to place himself between Barbara and the diving board. “What’s your hurry?” he asked merrily. “Plenty of time for the bathing-beauty stuff. What say we have a wee chin-wag, You, Me, & Co., uh?”

Barbara eyed him with dismay. What new and odious development was this? Since the extraordinary scene on the evening of Smith’s accident, she had not encountered Questing alone and was almost unaware of the angry undercurrents which ran strongly through the normal course of life at Wai-ata-tapu. For Barbara was carried along the headier stream of infatuation. She was bemused with calf-love, an infant disease which, caught late, is doubly virulent. Since that first meeting in the dusk, she had not seen much of Gaunt. She was so grateful for her brief rapture and, upon consideration, so doubtful of its endurance, that she made no attempt to bring about a second encounter. It was enough to see him at long intervals, and receive his greeting. Of Questing she had thought hardly at all, and his appearance at the lake surprised as much as it dismayed her.

“What do you want to see me about, Mr. Questing?”

“Well now, I seem to have the idea there’s quite a lot I’d like to talk to Miss Babs about. All sorts of things,” said Mr. Questing, dropping his voice to a fruity croon. “All sorts of things.”

“But — would you mind — you see I’m just going to…”

“What’s the big hurry?” urged Mr. Questing, in his best synthetic American. “Wait a bit, wait a bit. The lake won’t get cold. You ought to do some sun-bathing. You’d look good if you bronzed, Babs. Snappy.”

“I’m afraid I really can’t…”

“Look,” said Mr. Questing with emphasis. “I said I wanted to talk to you and what I meant was I wanted to talk to you. You’ve no call to act as if I’d made certain suggestions. What’s the idea of all this shrinking stuff? Mind, I like it in moderation. It’s old-world. Up to a point it pleases a man, but after that it’s irritating and right now’s the place where you want to forget it. We all know you’re the pure-minded type by this time, girlie. Let it go at that.”

Barbara gaped at him. “There’s a camp-stool behind that bush,” he continued. “Come and sit on it. I’ll say this better if I keep on my feet. Be sensible, now. You’re going to enjoy this, I hope. It’s a great little proposition when viewed in the correct light.” Barbara looked back at the house. Her mother appeared hurrying along the verandah. She did not glance up, but at any moment she might do so and the picture of her daughter, tête-à-tête with Mr. Questing instead of swimming in the lake, would certainly disturb her. Yet Mr. Questing stood between Barbara and the lake and, if she tried to dodge him, might attempt to restrain her. Better get the extraordinary interview over as inconspicuously as possible. She walked round the manuka bush and sat on the stool; Mr. Questing followed. He stood over her smelling of soap, cigars and scented cachous.