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living up to what he thought might be their standards and hoping they would not guess the effort incurred. Quickness came back to him like a neglected talent summoned in an emergency: as if he rose in trepidation to a platform and cleared his throat to sing.
    The room itself appeared unawed by him—not from any disorder but from very naturalness. A room where there had been expectation would have conveyed the fact—by a tension of plumped cushions and placed magazines, a vacancy from unseemly objects bundled out of sight; by suspense slowly dwindling in the curtains. This room was quite without such anxiety. On its upholstery, the nap of the usual was undisturbed. No tribute of preparation had been paid him here, unless perhaps the flowers, which were fresh and which he himself if he had only thought.
    It was a high room that Grace said had seen better days.
    Christian said, "I can't imagine a better day than this."
    A few objects, and the books, evidently their own. There was a warped picture of a woman's head painted on wood.
    "Caro got it in Seville."
    "It's an angel."
    Caro had been three months in Spain for the language. To do this she had gone as nursemaid to an English family, who had afterwards taken her to France and to Italy. Caro was now working—serving was what she said—in a bookshop while studying for a government examination.
    It was even worse with Grace, who was in the Complaints Department at Harrods.
    There could be no outcome to such activities but marriage. He knew all about Caro's examination and she would never pass it. It had only recently been opened to women, and he had never heard of a woman passing it. "It is stiff," he said. It did not even lead to prospects, you came in at the lower level, it was a way of having people with languages without giving them career service.
    "An exploitation, if you like," he concluded.
    Caro said, "I don't like," and took a cream wafer. "Peek Frean's," she read, before biting the lettering in half.
    "I shall confine myself to saying," he began again, and stopped.
    He did not know where he got these expressions, I confine myself, I shall refrain from, I withhold comment upon—as if he had placed himself under house arrest. It might be from his father. He asked with whom had she dealt, where was she to present herself. And over the officials and bureaux of her answers assented with knowing confirmation—as a Greek will sagely nod at the mention of Hesiod or Pindar even if he has never read a line of them.
    The situation of Grace was more pointed still, an abeyance. What could she possibly learn in a Complaints Department?
    "I," said Grace Bell, "have learned that a soft answer does not turn away wrath." The girls fell to laughing together, their bodies slightly inclined each to each even across a tea-table.
    Caro told him, "London is our achievement. Our career, for the time being." As if she read through his forehead like glass. "Having got here is an attainment, being here is an occupation."
    Like a creature whose lair has been observed, he shifted to new cover. "Very sensible not to plan too far ahead."
    They would talk about him afterwards, and Caro would adjudi-cate. He did not know if Grace would abide by the verdict or not.
    Caro would bite him in half like a biscuit. He wondered how Caro stood up to Dora, and for a moment would have been curious to see them together. When Caro got to her feet, when she brought hot water or closed a window, she moved with consequence as if existence were not trivial.
    When these girls were small their parents had drowned in a capsized ferry. Christian was to refer to this as "a boating accident"
    for the rest of his life.
    "And do you then," to show his independence of their futures,
    "mean to try out life here, and return to—was it—Sydney?"
    Caro laughed. "Life doesn't work that way."
    As if she knew, and he did not.

    A plate on which biscuits had lain was old, chipped, Italian, and had a border of rustic lettering.