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years at that age.’
    ‘That’s all very well,’ said Eden.
    ‘I can’t bring myself to recommend patience,’ said George, ‘when it’s someone else who has to exercise it.’
    George was straining to keep his temper down, and Eden’s smile had become perfunctory.
    ‘So you intend to make a gesture,’ said Eden. ‘I’ve always found that most gestures do more harm than good.’
    ‘I’m afraid that I don’t regard this as a gesture,’ said George.
    Eden frowned, paused, and went on: ‘There is another point, Passant. I didn’t particularly want to make it. And I don’t want to lay too much emphasis on it. But if you go ahead, it might conceivably raise some personal difficulties for Howard and myself – since we are, in a way, connected with you.’
    ‘They suggested this morning that you were responsible, I suppose?’ George cried.
    ‘I shouldn’t say that was actually suggested, should you, Howard?’ said Eden.
    ‘In any case,’ said George, ‘I consider they were using an intolerably unfair weapon in approaching you.’
    ‘I think perhaps they were,’ said Eden. ‘I think perhaps they were. But that doesn’t affect the fact.’
    ‘If we were all strictly fair, George,’ said Martineau, ‘not much information would get round, would it?’
    George asked Eden: ‘Did you make these people realise that I was acting as a private person?’
    ‘My dear Passant, you ought to know that one can’t draw these distinctions. If you – not to put too fine a point on it – choose to make a fool of yourself among some influential people, then Howard and I will come in for a share of the blame.’
    ‘I can draw these distinctions,’ said George, ‘and, if you will authorise me, I can make them extremely clear to these – to your sources of information.’
    ‘That would only add to the mischief,’ said Eden.
    There was quiet for a moment. Then George said: ‘I shall have to ask you a definite question. You are not implying, Mr Eden, that this action of mine cuts across my obligations to the firm?’
    ‘I don’t intend to discuss it in those terms,’ said Eden. ‘I’ve been talking in a purely friendly manner among friends. In my opinion you’d do us all a service by sleeping on it, Passant. That’s all I’m prepared to say. And now, if you’ll forgive me, Howard, I’m afraid that I must go and get some sleep myself.’
    We heard his footsteps down the path and the click of the latch. George stared at the carpet. Without looking up he said to Martineau: ‘I’m sorry that I’ve spoiled your evening.’
    ‘Don’t be silly, George. Harry Eden always was clumsy with the china.’ Martineau had followed George’s eyes to the stain on the carpet, and spoke as though he knew that, in George’s mind, the spill was rankling more even than the quarrel. Martineau went on: ‘As for your little disagreement, of course you know that Harry was trying to smooth the matter down.’
    George did not respond, but in a moment burst out: ‘I should like to explain to you, Mr Martineau. I know you believe that I should be careful about doing harm to the firm. I thought it over as thoroughly as I could: I’m capable of deceiving myself occasionally, but I don’t think I did this time. I decided that it would cause a whiff of gossip – I admit that, naturally – but it wouldn’t lose us a single case. You’d have made the same decision: except that you wouldn’t have deliberated quite so long.’ George was speaking fervently, naturally, with complete trust. I wished that he could have spoken in that way to Eden – if only for a few words.
    ‘I’m a cautious old creature, George,’ said Martineau.
    ‘Cautious! Why, you’d bring the whole town down on our heads if you felt that some clerk, whom you’d never seen, wasn’t free to attend the rites of a schismatic branch of the Greek Orthodox Church – in which you yourself, of course, passionately disbelieved.’ George gave a friendly