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bred to the trade'—so that by the time he appeared in the Swan with Walter of an evening Salcott St Mary knew all about him and were prepared to accept him in spite of his reprehensible good looks. The Salcott aliens, of course, had no prejudice against good looks and no hesitation whatever in accepting him. Toby Tullis took one look at him and straightway forgot his royalties, the new comedy he had just finished, the one he had just begun, and the infidelity of Christopher Hatton (how had he ever been such a half-wit as to trust a creature of a vanity so pathological that he could take to himself a name like that!) and made a bee-line for the bench where Walter had deposited Searle while he fetched the beer.
    'I think I saw you at Lavinia's party in town,' he said, in his best imitation-tentative manner. 'My name is Tullis. I write plays.' The modesty of this phrase always enchanted him. It was as if the owner of a transcontinental railroad were to say: 'I run trains.'
    'How do you do, Mr Tullis,' said Leslie Searle. 'What kind of plays do you write?'
    There was a moment of silence while Tullis got his breath back, and while he was still searching for words Walter came up with the beer.
    'Well,' he said, 'I see you have introduced yourselves.'
    'Walter,' said Tullis, deciding on his line and leaning towards Walter with empressement, 'I have met him!'
    'Met whom?' asked Walter who always remembered his accusatives.
    'The man who never heard of me. I have met him at last!'
    'And how does it feel?' asked Walter, glancing at Searle and deciding yet once again that there was more in Leslie Searle than met the eye.
    'Wonderful, my boy, wonderful. A unique sensation.'
    'If you care, his name is Searle. Leslie Searle. A friend of Cooney Wiggin.'
    Walter saw a shadow of doubt cross the fish-grey eye of Toby Tullis and followed the thought quite clearly. If this beautiful young man had been a friend of the very-international Cooney, then was it possible that he had never heard of the even-more-international Toby Tullis? Was it possible that the young man was taking him for a ride?
    Walter set the beer mugs down, slid into the seat beside Searle, and prepared to enjoy himself.
    Across the room he could see Serge Ratoff glaring at this new piece of grouping. Ratoff had at one time been the raison d'être and prospective star of an embryo play of Toby Tullis's which was to be called Afternoon and was all about a faun. Unfortunately it had suffered considerable changes in the processes of birth and had eventually become something called Crépuscule , which was all about a little waiter in the Bois, and was played by a newcomer with an Austrian name and a Greek temperament. Ratoff had never recovered from this 'betrayal'. At first he had drunk himself into scintillations of self-pity; then he had drunk to avoid the ache of self-pity that filled him when he was sober; then he was sacked because he had become independable both at rehearsals and performance; then he reached the ultimate stage of a ballet dancer's downfall and ceased even to practise. So that now, vaguely but surely, the fatty tissue was blurring the spare tautness. Only the furious eyes still had the old life and fire. The eyes still had meaning and purpose.
    When Toby ceased to invite him to the house at Salcott, Ratoff had bought the old stable next the village shop; a mere lean-to against the shop's gable end; and made it into a dwelling for himself. This had proved in a quite unexpected way his salvation, for his point of vantage next the only shop in the place had turned him from a mere reject of Toby's into a general purveyer of gossip to the community, and therefore a person in his own right. The villagers, lured by the childish quality in his make-up, treated him without the reservation that they used to the other aliens, employing to him the same tolerance that they used to their own 'innocents'. He was therefore the only person in the village who was equally free