“It is an essential feature.” He was preoccupied with his vouchers.

“Might there be a cancellation?”

“I beg your pardon? You were saying?”

“A cancellation?”

“Ah. Quite. Well — possibly. You feel you would like to join one of my expeditions.”

“Very much,” Sophy said and supposed that it must be so. He pursed up his full mouth and thumbed over his vouchers. “Ah,” he said. “As it falls out! There is a cancellation, I see. Saturday, the twenty-sixth. Our first tour. The afternoon and evening. But before you make a decision I’m sure you would like to know about cost. Allow me.”

He produced a folder and turned aside in a gentlemanly manner while Sophy examined it. The itinerary was given and the name of the restaurant where the party would dine. In the evening they would take a carriage drive and then visit a nightclub. The overall charge made Sophy blink. It was enormous.

“I know,” Mr. Mailer tactfully assured her. “But there are many much, much less expensive tours than mine. The Signorina here would be pleased to inform you.”

Obviously he didn’t give a damn whether she went or stayed away. This attitude roused a devil of recklessness in Sophy. After all, mad though it seemed, she could manage it.

“I shall be very glad to take the cancellation,” she said, and even to herself her voice sounded both prim and defiant.

He said something further in Italian to the girl, raised his hat, murmured, “Then — arrivederci,” to Sophy and left her to cope.

“You pay to me,” said the girl ferociously and when Sophy had done so presented her with a ticket and a cackle of inexplicable laughter. Sophy laughed jauntily if senselessly in return, desiring, as always, to be friendly with all and sundry.

She continued to walk about Rome and to anticipate, with feelings she would have been quite unable to define, Saturday, the twenty-sixth of April.

“I must say,” Lady Bracely murmured, “you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself very madly. I never saw such a glum face.”

“I’m sorry, Auntie Sonia. I don’t mean to look glum. Honestly, I couldn’t be more grateful.”

“Oh,” she said, dismissing it, “grateful! I just hoped that we might have a nice, gay time together in Rome.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“You’re so — odd. Restless. And you don’t look at all well, either. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Nothing.”

“On the tiles I suppose.”

“I’ll be all right. Really.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have pranced out of Perugia like that.”

“I couldn’t have been more bored with Perugia. Students can be such an unutterable drag. And after Franky and I broke up — you know.”

“All the same your parents or lawyers or the Lord Chancellor or whoever it is will probably be livid with me. For not ordering you back.”

“Does it matter? And anyway — my parents! We know, with all respect to your horrible brother, darling, that the longer his boy-child keeps out of his life the better he likes it.”

“ Kenneth — darling!”

“As for Mummy—what’s the name of that dypso-bin she’s moved into? I keep forgetting.”

“Kenneth!”

“So come off it, angel. We’re not still in the twenties, you know.”

They looked thoughtfully at each other.

His aunt said: “Were you a very bad lot in Perugia, Kenneth?”

“No worse than a dozen others.”

“What sort of lot? What did you do?”

“Oh.” Kenneth said, “this and that. Fun things.” He became self-suffused with charm. “You’re much too young to be told,” he said. “What a fabulous dress. Did you get it from that amazing lady?”

“Do you like it? Yes, I did. Astronomical.”

“And looks it.”

His aunt eyed herself over. “It had better,” she muttered.

“O Lord!” Kenneth said discontentedly and dropped into a chair. “Sorry! It must be the weather or something.”

“To tell you the truth I’m slightly edgy myself. Think of something delicious and outrageous we can do, darling. What is there?”

Kenneth folded his hands across the lower half of his face like a yashmak. His large and melting brown eyes looked over the top at his aunt. There was a kind of fitful affectation in everything he did: he tried on his mannerisms and discarded them as fretfully as his aunt tried on her hats.

“Sweetie,” he said. “There is a thing.”

“Well — what? I can’t hear you when you talk behind your fingers.”

He made a triangular hole with them and spoke through that. “I know a little man,” he said.

“What little man? Where?”

“In Perugia and now here.”

“What about him?”

“He’s rather a clever little man. Well, not so little, actually.”

“Kenneth, don’t go on like that. It’s maddening: it’s infuriating.” And then suddenly: “In Perugia. Did you — did you — smoke—?”

“There’s no need for the hushed tones, darling. You’ve been handed the usual nonsense, I see.”

“Then you did?”

“Of course,” he said impatiently, and after a pause changed his attitude. He clasped his hands round his knee and tilted his head on one side. “You’re so fabulous,” he said. “I can tell you anything. As if you were my generation. Aren’t we wonderful? Both of us?”

“Are we? Kenneth — what’s it like?”

“Pot? Do you really want to know?”

“I’m asking, aren’t I?”

“Dire the first time and quite fun if you persevere. Kid stuff really. All the fuss is about nothing.”

“It’s done at — at parties, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, lovey. Want to try?”

“It’s not habit-forming. Is it?”

“Of course it’s not. It’s nothing. It’s O.K. as far as it goes. You don’t get hooked. Not on pot. You’d better meet my little man. Try a little trip. In point of fact I could arrange a fabulous trip. Madly groovy. You’d adore it. All sorts of gorgeous gents. Super exotic pad. The lot.”

She looked at him through her impossible lashes: a girl’s look that did a kind of injury to her face.

“I might,” she said.

“Only thing — it’s top-bracket for expense. All-time-high and worth it. One needs lots of lovely lolly and I haven’t — surprise, surprise — got a morsel.”

“Kenneth!”

“In fact if my rich aunt hadn’t invited me I would have been out on my little pink ear. Don’t pitch into me, I don’t think I can take it.”

They stared at each other. They were very much alike: two versions of the same disastrous image.

“I understand you,” Kenneth said. “You know that, don’t you? I’m a sponge, O.K.? But I’m not just a sponge. I give back something. Right?” He waited for a moment and when she didn’t answer, shouted. “Don’t I! Don’t I?”

“Be quiet. Yes. Yes, of course you do. Yes.”

“We’re two of a kind, right?”

“Yes. I said so, didn’t I. Never mind, darling. Look in my bag. I don’t know how much I’ve got.”

“God, you’re wonderful! I–I’ll go out straight away. I–I’ll — I’ll get it—” his mouth twisted— “fixed. We’ll have such a — what did that old burnt-out Egyptian bag call it? — or her boyfriend? — gaudy night? — won’t we?”

Her note-case shook in his hand. “There isn’t much here,” he said.

“Isn’t there?” she said. “They’ll cash a check downstairs. I’ll write one. You’d better have something in hand.”

When he had gone she went into her bedroom, sat in front of her glass and examined the precarious mask she still presented to the world.

Kenneth, yawning and sweating, went in febrile search of Mr. Sebastian Mailer.

“It’s the familiar story,” the tall man said. He uncrossed his legs, rose in one movement, and stood, relaxed, before his companion who, taken by surprise, made a laborious business of getting to his feet.

“The big boys,” said the tall man, “keep one jump ahead while their henchmen occasionally trip over our wires. Not often enough, however.”

“Excuse me, my dear colleague. Our wives?”

“Sorry. I meant: we do sometimes catch up with the secondary villains but their principals continue to avoid us.”