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young things on your arm tonight.”
    Adam sighed and sat back in the Bentley’s deeply cushioned leather, beginning to tire of the game. He had not yet abandoned the hope of eventually sharing his life with a wife and family, but the lady of his admittedly exacting dreams seemed to be maddeningly elusive.
    That was not Janet’s fault, of course. Still, he was glad she could not see how her persistent harping on the subject was beginning to annoy him. Though the white of his scarf and wing-collared shirt would be starkly visible above the black of his dinner jacket, he knew that his face was only a vague blur. She was wearing ubiquitous black as well, and blended almost invisibly into the darkness of the backseat, except where a choker of diamonds glittered against a vee of white throat opening upward toward the whiter patch that was her face.
    “Must I keep reminding you that I’m saving myself for the right woman?” he quipped, giving her the light-hearted rejoinder that he knew she expected. “You’re already married, after all.”
    “Oh, Adam! You are so incorrigible. It isn’t that you don’t have normal appetites—I know that from long ago. Lately, though, you seem to enjoy living like a monk!”
    Adam considered the accusation. In that part of his life that he shared with only a few close intimates, some aspects of their common work did recall the discipline and dedication required of monks; but that was hardly anything he was prepared to discuss with Janet, dear a friend as she might be.
    “Will you think me less monkish if we stop at Strathmourne for a drink, before I take you home?” he asked lightly. “I hasten to remind you that this is only an invitation for a drink. Lovely married ladies are always welcome at Strathmourne Abbey’s refectory table, but my monkish cell remains sacrosanct.”
    “Oh, Adam,” she giggled. “I don’t know why I put up with you. I don’t know why I ever did.”
    But she allowed him to change the subject, once he had told Humphrey to make the necessary diversion, settling into drowsy companionship with her head against his shoulder by the time Humphrey turned up the avenue to Strathmourne.
    The Bentley prowled up the winding track toward the gate-arch in a hiss of wet gravel. As they rounded the last bend below the house, Humphrey reached for the remote control box to unlock the gate. Then he uttered a startled exclamation and applied the brakes.
    The Bentley skidded to a halt in a back-sheet of rainwater. Adam sat up sharply and peered ahead through the forward windscreen, Janet stirring sleepily beside him. Drawn up at the closed wrought-iron gate and blocking it was a dark green Morris Minor, with timber sides. To the left of the car, a slight, rain-drenched figure spun around in the full glare of the Bentley’s headlamps.
    “Good God, is that Peregrine Lovat?” Adam exclaimed, already reaching for the door handle.
    The artist was wearing neither hat nor scarf. The rain had soaked through his trenchcoat, and his fair hair was plastered flat to his skull. He evidently had been pacing beside his car for some time, for his feet had worn a path through the wet carpet of fallen leaves. For an instant he stood arrested, as though mesmerized by the headlights; then he lurched forward, staggering toward the Bentley like a sleepwalker. He was not wearing his glasses.
    “Is he drunk?” Janet asked.
    “I don’t think so.”
    Throwing his topcoat around his shoulders, Adam stepped out of the car just in time to catch the younger man before he fell to his knees. Seen at close range, in the merciless revelation of the headlights, Peregrine looked even worse than Adam had imagined. His eyes were bloodshot and deeply hollowed from lack of sleep, and an ugly bruise stained his right temple.
    “Peregrine, what on earth has happened to you?” Adam demanded. “You look dreadful!”
    Peregrine made a sound between a sob and a moan and clutched at Adam’s sleeve with