They had walked swiftly and silently along through the bright evening daylight of the Finchley Road. Miriam held her knowledge suspended, looking forward to the enclosure at the end of the few minutes’ walk. But the conservatoire was not enclosed. The clear bright light flooding the rows and rows of seated summer clad Hampstead people and lighting up every corner of the level square hall was like the outside evening daylight. The air seemed as pure as the outside air. She followed Mr. Hancock to their seats at the gangway end of the fourth row passing between the sounds echoing thinly from the platform and the wave of attention sweeping towards the platform from the massed rows of intelligent faces. As they sat down the chairman’s voice ceased and the lights were lowered; but so slightly that the hall was still perfectly exposed and clear. The people still looked as though they were out of doors or in their large houses. This was modern improvement—hard clear light. Their minds and their thoughts and their lives and their clothes were always in it. She stared at the screen. A large slide was showing, lit from behind. It made a sort of stage scenery for the rest of the scene, all in one light. She fixed her attention. An enormous vessel with its side stove in, yes, “stove in”; in a dock. They got information at any rate and then perhaps got free and thought their own thoughts. No. They would follow and think and talk intelligently about the information. Rattling their cultured voices. Mad with pretences.... In dry dock, going to be repaired. Gazing sternly at the short man with the long pointer talking in an anxious high thin voice, his head with its upstanding crest of hair half-turned towards the audience, she suppressed a giggle. Folding her hands she gazed, shaking in every limb, not daring to follow what he said for fear of laughing aloud. Shreds of his first long sentence caught in her thoughts and gave her his meaning, shaking her into giggles. Her features quivered under her skin as she held them in forcing her eyes towards the distances of sky beyond the ship. Her customary expletives shot through her mind in rapid succession with each one the scarves and silk and velvet of the audience grew brighter about the edge of her circle of vision.

2

She was an upstart and an alien and here she was. It was more extraordinary in this Hampstead clarity than at a theatre or concert in town. It was a part of his world ... and theirs; one might get the manner and still keep alive.... Was he out of humour because he had realised what he had done or because she had been late for dinner? Was he thinking what his behaviour amounted to in the eyes of his aunt and cousins; even supposing they did not know that the invitation to dinner and the lecture had been given only this afternoon? He must have known it was necessary to go home and tidy up. When he said the conservatoire was so near that there would be plenty of time was not that as good as saying she might be a little late? Why had he not said they were staying with him? Next week was full of appointments for their teeth. So he knew they were coming ... and then to go marching in to the midst of them three quarters of an hour late and to be so dumbfounded as to be unable to apologise ... my dear I shall never forget the faces of those women. I could not imagine at first what was wrong. He was looking so strange. The women barely noticed me—barely noticed me. “I’m afraid dinner will be spoiled” he said, in his way. “They had all been sitting round the fire three mortal quarters of an hour waiting for me!” How they would talk. Their thoughts and feelings about employees could be seen at a glance. It was bad enough for them to have a secretary appearing at dinner the first evening of their great visit. And now they were sitting alone round the fire and she was at the lecture alone, unchaperoned, with him, “she had the effrontery to come to dinner three quarters of an hour late ...” feathery hair and periwinkle eyes and white noses; gentle die-away voices. Perhaps the thought of his favourite cousins coming next week buoyed him up. No wonder he wanted to get away to the lecture. He had come, reasonably; not seeing why he should not; just as he would have gone if they had not been there. Now he saw it as they saw it. There he sat. She gazed at the shifting scenes ... ports and strange islands in distant seas, sunlit coloured mountains tops peaking up from forests. The lecturing voice was far away, irrelevant and unintelligible. Peace flooded her.