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The Colonel’s always said to be a bit deaf, so I bellowed good afternoon to him and he got up – a bit stiff because of his corsets – and introduced his nephew, John Basingstoke. I saw as the nephew got up to shake hands that he was tall and lean and dark, and I thought from his expression in profile that he looked rather supercilious. Then he turned his head and I got an awful shock, because there was a thick white scar marking the right side of his face. It moved in a semicircle from his ear to a point just below his mouth.
    “And yet in spite of this terrible scar – just the kind of thing which generally I simply can’t endure – there was something awfully attractive about him in a sort of gloomy Byronic way. And he had a beautiful voice (I’m very sensitive to voices), rich and deep and resonant.”
    Vicky put down her pen again and summoned that face to mind – unsmiling, slightly frightening, and yet somehow not repulsive.
    “I sat and talked to him about books and poetry and things until Anthony arrived, really very late.”
    She went over again in her mind those minutes before Anthony’s arrival, and rediscovered her own embarrassment at the ghastly floater she had made. There was her mother telling Colonel Stone about the difficulty of running a doctor’s household, tinkling a little brass bell for tea and murmuring something (on a warm day in May with the grate empty) about muffins under a silver cover, the kettle on the hob and toast made in front of the fire. There was the tea, not toast and muffins, but bread and butter and jam and little home-made cakes, coconut and plain. And there was she, saying with rather surprising timidity to this scarred young man: “Are you staying here long, Mr Basingstoke?” and he replied: “You must ask my uncle,” and went on to explain, with a frankness almost as distressing as his scar, that he was completely broke. What a strange thing to say! The queen of the salon would have an answer to it, no doubt – but what? “I hear you write,” she said, and regretted the remark as soon as it was made, especially when he responded with an unencouraging monosyllable. But having begun she must go on. “You’ll think me awfully ignorant, but – what sort of things?”
    He kept the good side of his face turned towards her and said gravely, “I have published a book of poems which sold exactly sixty-five copies, and I have in the press a novel which may sell a hundred and fifty.”
    She wrinkled her forehead. “But that’s not very profitable.”
    “Precisely. Hence my visit to my uncle.” He seemed to feel that he had been a little abrupt, and added, “I admire your grandfather’s early poems a great deal.”
    The remark fell into a pause in the conversation, and was heard by Colonel Stone. “Poetry,” he said suddenly. “Don’t let this young feller start talking about poetry to you, Miss Rawlings. Talk till the cows come home, and you can’t understand a word he says. Waste of time, poetry – don’t you think so?” He turned abruptly to Mrs Rawlings, but the question was beyond her. She poised the sugar-tongs and said archly, “Two lumps, Colonel?”
    “Thank you. When I was a young man people used to write real poetry – stuff you could sing .” Sitting with upright back the Colonel chanted:
     
    “Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a belted earl,
    Son of a Lambeth publican, we’re all the same today.
     
    “Can’t remember any of this modern stuff like that.”
    “Strong or weak, Colonel?”
    The Colonel looked at the straw-coloured mixture in the cup and said with dismay, “That looks delightful, Mrs Rawlings.”
    “I read a lot of poetry myself,” Vicky said.
    “Do you? Keats, Shelley and the Rubá‘iyát, with a little Rupert Brooke to bring you up to date?”
    What an intolerable young man! And it happened that the Rubá‘iyát was on her bedroom bookshelf (it was so sad), and that she had shed some tears over Rupert Brooke’s