He realized with surprise that he was happy. And in his happiness, he sang.

Many painters have sung at their work, as a form of incantation, an evocative spell. What they sing may not impress an outsider as having much to do with their painting. What Francis sang was an Oxford student song to the tune of the Austrian national anthem of an earlier and happier time, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser”:

On and on he moaned, happy at his work. The Happy Faker, he thought. As I do this, no one can touch me.

“Are you happy? I am.” Ruth Nibsmith turned her head on the pillow to look at Francis. She was not a beautiful woman, or a pretty woman, but she was well-formed and she was incontestably a jolly woman. Jolly was the only possible word. A fresh, high-spirited, merry, and, it proved, an amorous woman, who had in no way set out to lure Francis into her bed, but had cheerfully agreed to his suggestion that they advance their friendship in this direction.

“Yes, I am happy. And it’s nice of you to say that you are. I haven’t had much luck making anyone happy in this way.”

“Oh, but it’s good sport, isn’t it? How would you rank our performance, in university terms?”

“I’d give us a B+.”

“An excellent second class. Well, I dunno—I’d call it an A-. That’s modest, and keeps us well below the Romeo and Juliet level. Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed it immensely these last few days.”

“You speak as if it were over.”

“It is over. The Countess brings Amalie back from Munich tomorrow, and I must take to my role as the model of behaviour and discretion. Which I do without regret, or not too much regret. One has to play fair with one’s employers, you know; the Countess trusts me, and so I can’t be having it off with another of the upper servants in the Castle when I am watching over Amalie. Oh, if Amalie could see us now she’d be green with envy!”

“What? That kid?”

“Kid my foot! Amalie’s fourteen, and warm as one of those porcelain stoves. She adores you, you know.”

“I’ve hardly spoken to her.”

“Of course. You are distant, unattainable, darkly melancholy. Do you know what she calls you? Le Beau Ténébreux. She’s eating her heart out for you. It would plunge her into despair to think you were content with her governess.”

“Oh, shut up about the governess! And about upper servants; I’m nobody’s servant.”

“Balls, my boy! One’s lucky if that’s all one is. The Countess isn’t a servant; she’s a slave to this place, and to her determination to restore the family fortunes. You and I are just paid hands, able to leave whenever we please. I like being an upper servant. Lots of my betters have been upper servants. If it wasn’t too much for Haydn to wear the livery of the Esterhazys, who am I to complain? There’s a lot to be said for knowing one’s place.”

“That’s what Victoria Cameron used to say.”

“One of the women in your gaudy past?”

“No. Something like my nurse, I suppose. I have no gaudy past, as I’m sure you’ve read in the stars. My wife was always rubbing it in.”

“A wife? So that’s the woman in the horoscope?”

“You’ve found her, then?”

“A woman who gave you the most frightful dunt.”

“That’s Ismay, right enough. She always said I was too innocent for my own good.”

“You’re not innocent, Frank. Not in any stupid way. Your horoscope makes that extremely clear.”

“When are you going to unveil the great horoscope? It’d better be soon, if the Countess comes back tomorrow.”

“Tonight’s the night. And we must get out of this nest of guilty passion right away, because I’ve got to dress and so have you, and we both want a wash.”

“I’d been thinking about a bath. We both reek, in an entirely creditable way.”

“No, no bath. The servants would be on to us at once if we bathed during the late afternoon. In the Bavarian lexicon of baths, an afternoon bath means sex. No, you must be content with a searching wash, in your pre-dinner allowance of hot water.”

“Okay. ‘Ae fond kiss, and then we sever’.”

“ ‘Ae farewell, alas, forever’.”

“Oh Ruth, don’t say forever.”

“Of course not. But until dinner, anyhow. And now—up and out!”

“I hope there’s something good for dinner.”

“What would you guess?”

“Something utterly unheard of in Düsterstein. What would you say to veal?”

“Bang on! I saw the menu this morning. Poitrine de veau farci.”

“Ah, well; in the land of veal, all is veal.

“Lucky to get it. I could eat a horse.”

“Hunger is the best sauce.”

“Frank, that’s magnificent. What an encapsulation of universal experience! Is it your own?”

Francis gave her a playful punch, and went back to his own room, for a searching wash before dinner.

After dinner, the horoscope. Ruth had an impressive clutch of papers, some of which were zodiacal charts, upon which she had added copious notations in a handsome Italic hand.

“The writing oughtn’t to swear at the material, you see, so I learned to write like this.”

“Yes. Very nice. The only trouble is that it’s so easily forged.”

“Think so? I’m sure you could spot a forgery of your own fist.”

“Yes, I’ve done so.”

“There you go, being Le Beau Ténébreux. Could it have been the Dream Girl who appears so strongly in your chart?”

“It was. Clever of you to guess.”

“A lot of this work is clever guessing. Making hints from the chart fit in with hints from the subject. That girl is an important figure for you.”

“Thank God she’s gone.”

“Not gone. She’ll be back.”

“What then?”

“Depends if she’s still the Dream Girl. You ought to get wise to yourself, Francis. If she treated you badly, some of it was your own fault. When men go about making Dream Girls out of flesh-and-blood girls, it has the most awful effect on the girl. Some fall for it, and try to embody the dream, and that is horribly phoney and invites trouble; others become perfect bitches because they can’t stand it. Is your wife a bitch?”

“Of the most absolute and triple-distilled canine order.”

“Probably only a fool. Fools make more trouble than all the bitches ever whelped. But let’s look at your full chart. Let’s get down on the floor, where I can spread it out. Put some books on the corners to hold it down. That’s it. Now—”

It was a handsome chart, handsome as the zodiac can be, and as neatly annotated as a governess could make it.

“I won’t overwhelm you with astrological jargon, but take a look at these principal facts. The important thing is that your Sun is in midheaven, and that’s terrific. And your eastern horizon—the point of ascent—is in conjunction with Saturn, who is a greatly misunderstood influence, because people immediately think, Oh yes, Saturn, he must be saturnine, or sour-bellied, but that’s not what it really means at all. Your Moon is in the north, or subterranean midheaven. And—now this is very significant—your Sun is in conjunction with Mercury. Because of your very powerful Sun, you have lots of vitality, and believe me you need it, because life has given you some dunts, and has some others in waiting. But that powerful Sun also assures you of being right in the mainstream of psychic energy. You’ve got spiritual guts, and lots of intuition. Then that wonderful, resilient, swift Mercury. Psychologically, Francis, you are very fast on your feet.