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jauntiness which added considerably to his disturbing air of active irresponsibility.
    â€˜That’s right, Georgie,’ he said, in his flat staccato voice. ‘Forget the fellow if you can, and if you can’t don’t make an ass of yourself.’
    Even he seemed to feel that this admonition might sound a trifle harsh to the uninitiated, for he suddenly smiled with that transfiguring, sunny happiness usually associated with early childhood. ‘What I mean to say is, a lovely girl looks very touching grizzling over a corpse, but she looks damned silly doing it over a skeleton. She’s missed the boat. The great lover’s not merely dead, dearest; he’s dead and gone. Should I be a bounder if I asked for a drink?’
    The last remark was directed towards Val with a quick-eyed charm which was ingratiating.
    â€˜Certainly not. You must all need one.’ Val sounded thoroughly startled. She glanced at Rex, who had been hovering on the edge of the group, and he nodded and disappeared. Ferdie Paul resumed his hold on Georgie. He had a gently contemptuous way with her, as if she were a difficult elderly relative of whom he was fond.
    â€˜We’re going to see the great dress for the third act first,’ he said. ‘I want to make sure that when Pendleton gets you by the throat he can only tear the left shoulder out. It’s got to be restrained and dignified. I don’t want you running about in your brassière. The whole danger of that scene is that it may go a bit
vieux jeu
if we don’t look out . . . nineteen-twenty-sixish or so. Lady Papendeik wants us to see the dress on the model first because apparently it’s pretty hot. Then I want you to get into it and we’ll run through that bit.’
    Georgia stiffened.
    â€˜I’m not going to rehearse here in front of a lot of strangers,’ she protested. ‘God knows I’m not temperamental, sweetheart, but there are limits. You’re not going to ask me to do that, Ferdie, not this afternoon of all times?’
    â€˜Georgia.’ Paul’s arm had tightened, and Campion saw his round brown eyes fixed firmly upon the woman’s own with a terrifying quality of intelligence in them, as if he were trying to hypnotize some sense into her. ‘Georgia, you’re not going to be silly, are you,
dear
?’
    It was an idiotic little scene, reminding Campion irresistibly of a jockey he had once heard talking to a refractory horse.
    â€˜We’ll go. Mr Campion and I will go, Miss Wells.’ Alan Dell spoke hastily and Paul, looking up, seemed to see him for the first time.
    â€˜Oh, no, that’s all right,’ he said. ‘There’s only a few of us here. It’s a purely technical matter. You’re going to be reasonable, aren’t you, darling? You’re only a bit jittery because of the boy-friend.’
    Georgia smiled at him with unexpected tolerance and turned to Dell with a little deprecating grimace.
    â€˜My nerves have gone to pieces,’ she said, and it occurred to Mr Campion that she might easily be more accurate than she realized.
    It was at this moment that Tante Marthe came over with one of her small coloured pages at her elbow.
    â€˜
The Trumpet
is on the phone, my dear,’ she said. ‘Will you speak to them?’
    Georgia’s hunted expression would have been entirely convincing if it had not been so much what one might have expected.
    â€˜All right,’ she said heavily. ‘This is the horrible part of it all. This is what I’ve been dreading. Yes, I’ll come.’
    â€˜No.’ Ramillies and Paul spoke together and paused to look at one another afterwards. It was the briefest interchange of glance and Mr Campion, who was watching them both, became aware for the first time that the undercurrent which he had been trying to define throughout the entire afternoon was an unusual, and in the circumstances incomprehensible,