“ARE YOU ALL right?” Nora stood there in her dressing-gown, when Ydette opened her door in response to a tap, half an hour or so after the flat had retired for the night; “I thought perhaps you might be …”

She could not quite get her tongue round ‘homesick’.

“Thank you; I am very well.” And indeed, at the sight of that face, now greasy with night-cream but endearingly familiar, and those clever eyes that had looked upon the aunts, and Madame van Roeslaere, and even Klaas, to say nothing of Klaartje and the Three Towers, Ydette’s own face widened into a smile that absolutely fascinated Nora; causing an imagination not usually given to flights of fancy to present her with images of grateful giraffes and complacent honeysuckles.

“Not lonely?” She forced herself to utter the word which must never be used of feelings or people but only of landscapes.

“I wish all were here,” confided Ydette, “my aunts, and all who are at home.”

“It would be rather a tight fit, wouldn’t it?” said Nora, and the essay at Christopher’s style of humour when talking to Ydette was rewarded with another delighted smile.

“Well,” she said, preparing to withdraw, “I just thought that I would make sure you have everything you want.”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

“I think you might manage to call me Nora, don’t you?”

Ydette smiled, but did not answer. Her eyes rested gently on Nora’s, and the latter suddenly felt a strong wish to protect her.

Without knowing much about the world of the film-makers, the little that she did know, through the conversation and habits of Christopher and his friends, made her suspect that his ‘find’ would not be happy there; that she might even find it impossible, if she went into it, to be good. (By ‘good’, Nora meant the keeping of personal integrity and the abiding by certain standards of conduct which had been very carefully thought out.) A word of warning might be dropped, she thought.

But it was late, and she was tired, and she really did rather shrink from entering into explanations that might keep them whispering there until one o’clock; besides, wouldn’t it be distinctly unfair to Chris to prejudice his starlet against a film career even before she had started on one? But she did lean forward and gently kiss Ydette.

“Sleep well,” she said, smiling, and noiselessly shut the door.

Mejuffrouw Nora, so clever, to kiss her! This was the first time that anyone not an aunt or her granny had kissed her since she ceased to be a little girl (here her thoughts hastily shied away from the memory of the last time she had thought about kissing): and, comforted, and feeling less lonely, she fell asleep.

Saturday, however, was worse.

Her spirits had fallen steadily during breakfast, for Nora had returned to her usual manner, and ate in silence while looking for the most part absently out of the window, and the two other girls had chattered away in long words and very fast, scarcely interrupting themselves to shove the sugar at Ydette (they seemed surprised that she drank her coffee with sugar) or to push the bread at her with brief smiles. She was not used to long conversations at any time, least of all during the times when one was eating, but she did not like feeling so out of it all. And she would have liked Mejuffrouw Nora (no, she could not drop the mejuffrouw, it was no use) to talk to her.

After breakfast the white mejuffrouw with the big eyes went into her bedroom with a great pile of books and shut the door, and Mejuffrouw Nora and the Austrian-dress one went out together.

Christopher arrived a little later, disliking the hot weather and irritable because Susan had come home unexpectedly, very lively, and demanding to be taken out. He wanted to take her (she was one of those girls who look very beautiful in the last stage of pregnancy, and he was proud of the respectful admiration she attracted when they walked abroad) and he had planned to make Nora entertain Ydette that day. His annoyance, when he found that his sister had gone creeping off into the country with Evelyn, was considerable. He had to telephone Susan and break it to her that Ydette must make a third for lunch.

If Evelyn and Hilary had alarmed Ydette, Susan puzzled and irritated her. She thought Susan’s dress—an elegant olive-coloured modification of the sack line—as ugly as it was revealing, and her quick, high-bred voice contemptuous. Susan, after saying a few nice things to her with the flashing smile due to a possible future star discovered by Susan’s husband, talked entirely to Christopher, who occasionally asked Ydette if she would like another pineapple-juice, but simply could not resist the fascination of his wife, and hardly took his eyes off her. It happened to be a day when Ydette was looking almost plain, and he knew with resigned annoyance that Susan was wondering what all the enthusiasm had been about.

In the afternoon he drove them up to Hampstead Heath, and they trailed silently about in the thundery heat, looking at London spread out in the valley; and lack-lustredly admiring the rose-garden at Kenwood House. By the time they were having tea in the Old Stables there, he felt as though the day had been going on for six weeks, and the sight of Ydette’s expressionless, milky face and black crescents of lowered eyelashes, as she sat winding her long pink tongue unhurriedly round the ‘lolly’ she had with quiet obstinacy insisted on buying, was almost unbearably irritating.

In fact, she was enjoying one of the few moments of peace which she had experienced that day, largely because she had been able to secure this object, which, while satisfying her longing for an ice-cream, did not remind her too painfully of the kind she was accustomed to eat with Jooris. All her thoughts, now, were either of what they might be doing at home, or occupied with counting the hours until she got back there, and although England was beautiful, she did not like it because it was unfamiliar.

Susan, feeling belatedly that she had been neglectful of her wifely duties towards Christopher’s career, exerted herself in the car on the way home to charm Ydette. She sparkled; she asked interesting questions; she made sensible remarks (neither too frivolous nor too plainly taking it for granted that Ydette’s life might soon be entirely altered) concerning the possibility of her getting a small part in a film directed by this Mr Burke, and she told Ydette what a lot she might then be able to do for her family.

Ydette did not make any reply.

“I think it would be a good idea if you got to bed early tonight, Ydette,” Christopher said, very masterfully indeed, as the car stopped outside Imperial Court. “If I were you I should just have some—er—some milk or something and then tumble in.”

“Tomble——?” She was standing there, looking about seven feet high in her long black coat, staring at him.

“Into bed, I mean.” He was conscious of Susan’s far-from-stifled giggle. “Here—I’d better come up with you, just in case all those wretched—in case none of the girls are in.”

The door, however, was opened by Hilary, with an even whiter face than usual. No, they hadn’t really disturbed her; she had only been resting; not asleep; she had been working all day and had rather a headache; it was this wretched Biology on Monday that she was rather dreading; it was her weakest subject.

Christopher, who saw no reason why a young woman should require a Research Fellowship with the Nature Conservancy, murmured, “Oh, is it?” and the atmosphere was not lightened by Hilary adding that she was taking Biology to help her with the theme she was working on for her Ph.D.

Ydette had wandered into the kitchen and was staring fearfully at the electric stove. Feeling rather like a good Pagan leaving a Christian to the lions, Christopher repeated his advice about milk or something and went quickly away.

“For God’s sake kiss me—I’m starting to loathe women,” he said to Susan as he shut the door of the car.

“Poor love. Let’s go and have daiquaris somewhere.”

“The O. is up to a hundred and four. I told you. (How lovely you smell. I suppose that cost the earth, too.)”

“(No, it didn’t, I pinched some of Mummy’s ‘Joy’.) Never mind, Ydette’s going to make our fortune, and we’ll soon be rich.”

The evening passed exceedingly quietly at Imperial Court. Hilary worked in her own room, and Ydette, having brewed herself some milk under Hilary’s snappish instructions, slowly had a bath and went to bed. Nora and Evelyn, returning sunburnt and peaceful about eleven o’clock, found both their doors shut.

Nora had been asleep for perhaps two hours when she was aroused by a light, imperious tapping, and when, in answer to her sleepy call, her door opened, Hilary was revealed, looking younger than she did during the daytime because her hair was in two plaits, and exceedingly cross.

“Can you come and do something about that Belgian creature? She’s crying,” she said.

“Oh lord,” said Nora, feeling for her dressing-gown.

“Exactly.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Hil—has it been keeping you awake?”

“I’d just got to sleep when it started.”

“Oh, I am sorry.” And indeed she felt it, and rather apprehensive too, for a broken night upset Hilary as did nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, getting out of bed, and feeling miserably guilty.

“Don’t you bother, I can manage,” she whispered as she turned the handle of Ydette’s door.

“No, I’ll come too; I can probably manage better than you would,” and to Nora’s relief, Hilary smiled. Nora smiled too, and opened the door.

At once the sniffling and the sobbing, which had certainly sounded rather unrestrained, stopped. The room was dark, but the subdued glow from the hall showed the bed and a surprising quantity of dark hair, presumably damp with tears, scattered all over it. Hilary and Nora were both conscious of the same distaste, and Nora’s voice was brisker than usual as she said:

“Ydette? What’s the matter?”

An alarmed heaving, and the long, white shape surrounded by showers of black sat up. There was a gasping interrogative sound.

“Is there anything you want? Are you ill?”

They thought, although they could not be sure, that she was shaking her head.

“Well, if there isn’t anything you want and you don’t feel ill …” began Nora. But she felt rather unkind and was relieved when Hilary interrupted, in the voice she had been accustomed to use on juniors who had a ‘rave’ on her.

“I expect you’re rather homesick, aren’t you?—miles away from your family—especially if it’s the first time you’ve stayed away from home. But do cheer up, Chris is going to take you over the studios on Monday, and that will be fun, won’t it? And tomorrow you can have a nice quiet day.”

Silence. The head was apparently bent down into the showers of hair.

“Won’t it?” Hilary repeated, winningly.

“Yes, Mademoiselle.” They caught the whisper.

“And you mustn’t cry any more, because I’ve got a terribly difficult examination on Monday, in my very weakest subject. And if you cry, you’ll keep me awake,” Hilary ended on an appealing note.

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle.” Now they thought that she was busy with her handkerchief; she was moving her hands about near her bent head.

“So now you’ll go to sleep, won’t you? … Do you think you’d feel more comfortable if I got you a Disprin?”

A shake of the head. Hil was being marvellous, Nora thought.

“Sure? All right then … now you go to sleep, like a good child.”

“Yes, Mademoiselle.”

They waited a moment, but there was no further movement or sound. She only sat there, with her head bent.

“Good night,” said Hilary firmly, and they withdrew.

Outside in the hall she opened both eyes widely upon Nora.

“How very surprising. One would think that we were nine rather than nineteen.”

“Ydette is very childish in some ways,” said Nora. Although Hil had been both tactful and kind, she felt irritated with her. “It’s one of the things one likes the tiresome little creature for.”

“‘Likes’? Don’t you mean that one feels superior, and therefore pleased with her?”

“No. I mean ‘likes’. You must get back to bed, Hil; you’ll be dead tomorrow. Thanks most awfully for managing, and I’m terribly sorry about letting you in for all this.” She gestured helplessly with both hands. “It’s only until Tuesday, thank heaven.”

“It does prove, though, doesn’t it, that girls must be educated?” Hilary said thoughtfully. (She never noticed when you were irritated with her.) “You know, she makes me feel quite bad—all that wetness, and softness, and helplessness—it’s revolting, in some queer way. Don’t you agree?”

“Hil, you’re trying to start a discussion,” said Nora, not welcoming one at this hour, and unable to feel quite as fond of Hilary as usual, “we really must get back to bed.”

She lay awake for a little while, trying to hear whether Ydette was still crying. But there was complete silence throughout the flat. She felt sorry for Ydette; sorrier, actually, than she did for Hil.

But of course, Hil’s exams were rather more important than the fantods of a Belgian peasant.

Nora fell asleep.

Sunday was spent more quietly than either of the preceding days, but Ydette did not find in it much refreshment. And by evening—it began to rain about three o’clock, an event pointed out by her three hostesses as being typical of that peculiarly bright kind of late summer day in England—she was feeling more depressed than ever.

After they had all risen late, and dawdled over breakfast in a way that to Ydette seemed rather shocking, Nora took her to Westminster Cathedral and left her to go in alone to hear Mass, promising to call back for her.

This left Ydette with at least a clear conscience, but the familiarity of the service only emphasized the strangeness of her surroundings; she could not keep her eyes on the altar and off the unfamiliar faces on every side, and would even have been glad to see the rusty cape of the old woman who performed certain humble tasks connected with prayer-books and candle-selling at Our Lady’s, much as she usually disliked that sour and toil-hardened countenance. Nor could she, she felt, say her prayers properly when they did not go straight up through the roof to circle about the head of the Person in the pointed hat. They seemed to fall back again, as if baffled. And when she came out again, into the strange streets of very tall buildings, full of solemn-faced people idling past the closed shops and cafés, and saw Mejuffrouw Nora standing aloofly awaiting her at the corner, and realized that it was only half-past twelve—her heart sank indeed.

The sinking was shown so plainly on her face that Nora’s subconscious misgivings about the situation suddenly took shape, and she resolved to talk to her. Firmly announcing that they would lunch out today, she took a taxi to Soho, where they found a restaurant that was open, and soon Ydette was looking more cheerful as she confronted a large piece of fried veal. (Nora noted the exact price of the latter, determined that Chris should pay both for it and for the taxi.)

“Now,” she began, determined to waste no time, “that’s better, isn’t it? I’m afraid you haven’t been enjoying your visit very much, have you, up until now?”

Ydette neither looked startled nor made any attempt at denial. She kept her eyes down, and Nora in a moment was compelled reluctantly to recognize the expression creeping over her face. Sulks, now. That was all that was needed.

“You must find it all rather strange,” she doggedly continued. “London is so big, and this is the first time you’ve been abroad, isn’t it? And of course, I and my friends are always so busy—I’m afraid you’ve been rather lonely.”

“No, Mademoiselle,” Ydette said, after a pause just long enough to be rude. She still did not look up, and, apparently uninterested, continued to masticate veal.

“What do you really think, Ydette,” Nora, feeling surprisingly rebuffed, ignored her own sensations and leant persuasively across the table, “about this plan for working in the cinema? Do you believe you can become a star? My brother believes it, you know. He’s absolutely convinced that you can, if you want to. Has he ever talked to you about acting?” But as she spoke she knew that acting, where a ‘waxlet’ was concerned, didn’t come into it. Jon Burke preferred malleable, teachable girls, Christopher had said, without the histrionic temperament.

Ydette shook her head, cutting up a piece of veal.

“Well, I don’t suppose you would have to do much of that—anyway, not in the accepted sense.” Nora paused, and called home her straying vocabulary. “It would all depend really on whether this Mr Burke thought he could make you into the kind of person he wants. Would you like that?”

Ydette suddenly looked up. Her expression was slightly desperate. Nora—so clever, and older, and rich, with a big flat and a very good job teaching French in a smart private school, the friend of those two frightening mejuffrouws—how to make her understand the miserable loneliness, the silly longing for the streets and towers and light of home? How could she possibly know how frightened Ydette was about Jooris; that she might have made him so angry that he would never ask her to the farm again? (She knew, of course, in her calmer moments, that this idea was ridiculous, because the farm had always been there and so had he, but she could not dismiss, in her lonely fits, the recurring fear.)

She tried to answer.

“I like to work at packing the orchids, Mademoiselle; I like it there very much. Monsieur Chris says that I could be a vedette. But——”

“You don’t think you could be?—is that it?”

“I cannot——”

But here her small supply of words failed. What she wanted to say was that she could not possibly imagine such a thing happening to her—the body and spirit that had grown up for nineteen years with those vague friends who were yet now so painfully absent; the Three Towers, and the white sand of the dunes, the big house, and the orchids out at Sint Niklaas. But the words would not come, and frustration brought back her sulky expression.

“I don’t know, Mademoiselle,” she ended.

Nora, a believer in the restorative powers of reflection, time, sensible behaviour and all the other resources of civilized people, decided that she could do no more. She felt as if she had been trying to open a stubbornly-shut window that looked out on an unknown landscape; a little bruised, very baffled and curiously hurt, as if the window’s obduracy had been directed against herself. The odd thing was that she did not feel cross with Ydette. She still only wanted to protect her. She looked at the strikingly foreign figure sitting opposite, and felt really rather hopeless. She also began at this precise moment to look forward to tomorrow evening, when (if nothing came of her visit to the studios with Christopher) Ydette would be gone. But one thing she was going to say; whether Christopher liked it or not; it was her duty to say it, and she would.

“Well, I won’t worry you any more now,” she said, leaning forward again. She struggled with reserve and managed to get out something of what she wanted to express. “But—you know, I like you very much, Ydette, I always have, we all do—Chris and my sister and I—and I want you to have what Chris calls ‘a great, big, lovely success’. So I think I ought to warn you that if you do get a job with Mr Burke—you may not like the cinema studios and the people who work there.” She paused.

“They want only money, I expect,” said Ydette placidly; her sulky expression had been replaced by one of pleasure, and Nora wondered why.

“Yes, that’s what it is,” she said, surprised by this unexpectedly penetrating judgment. “That does sometimes make people rather … but you’ll like Mr Burke. He’s an artist.”

No more was said. She gave it up. She finished her luncheon, conscious that her last remark had been more optimistic than truthful. Did simple people always like artists?—artists, who could be rude, ruthless and selfish? Wouldn’t the kind of person whom Ydette would like resemble more a dog or a horse or a child?

Nora wished that she were sitting peacefully at home with The Observer. She paid the bill, collected her protégée and took them back to South Kensington by another taxi through the quiet Sunday streets. She had said her say; her conscience was clear; but she could not feel that any good had been achieved at all.

Monday morning came; fresh, sunny and clear. “Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright,” hummed Evelyn, standing at the window.

“Must you sing?” demanded Hilary savagely, where she sat amidst text-books and notes at the breakfast table.

“Sorry; it is maddening, I know.” Evelyn slipped back to the seat whence the glow of the morning had tempted her. Hil had never really recovered, she thought, from that business in their last year at Oxford, when she had got herself into that extraordinary scrape with Peter Bayford in Jugoslavia and been three weeks late for the beginning of term—by her own fault, on her own admission, and had consequently been rusticated. Jugoslavia and Peter and Hilary had all been in the Daily Express, with photographs, and to this day Hil had never told them exactly what had happened.

Evelyn had no wish to be obvious in her suppositions or inquisitive in her thoughts. She took some marmalade made by Mummy Perowne, and turned brightly to Ydette.

“This is the great day, isn’t it? Are you feeling excited?” she brightly asked.

Ydette’s lugubrious shake of the head was interrupted by the arrival of Christopher, so nervous that he had cut himself while shaving, and irritably playful in manner.

“Hullo, girls! Everybody happy? Hilary, surely you’re too much of an old sweat to have text-books for breakfast before an exam?”

“I can’t help it; I can’t sleep; you know I’m no use at anything when I can’t sleep; I go absolutely to pieces,” she said crossly.

Christopher shrugged, Nora looked conscious, and Evelyn pitiful, and then Ydette reappeared, in coat and scarf and wearing an expression of apprehension mingled with stubbornness that caused his heart to sink.

“Cheer up,” he said to her, when, their farewells having been made and luck wished to the unresponding Hilary, they were driving away; “look here, you know, you mustn’t look like that. Jon Burke doesn’t go for sullen girls. You just think how lucky you are—you think of the hundreds and thousands of girls in England and Italy and America and France—and Russia too, I expect—who would give absolutely anything to have the chance you’ve got. You’re one girl in hundreds of thousands—in millions, really—who’s had the luck to have this wonderful chance, and now what I want you to do is just to be natural. Don’t feel afraid (no-one’s going to be cross with you) or try to be any different from what you always are. Just enjoy yourself, and everything will be perfectly all right. Will you do that, Ydette, to please me?”

He had never been more aware of how completely brotherly were his feelings towards her as he made the plea. As he looked into the lovely dark eyes with their feathery black canopies he did experience a momentary inward quiver, but it was because he had suddenly realized how much a director would have to do to her in order that those eyes might learn to convey the passions and desires of what the world calls maturity. And there was not going to be any help from her. … She … he certainly had put off facing this fact until the last moment … she definitely wasn’t teachable.

Oh well, Burke had tackled even more hopeless propositions, possessing the right kind of face, before now. (At least, Christopher hoped that he had.) He said no more, but drove as fast as traffic would permit towards Kent.

The studios of Commonwealth Association Films, which they reached just before twelve o’clock, filled what had fifteen years previously been some excellent farming land, then divided into five or six large meadows. These were now occupied by buildings: some new, of white concrete well designed and well built; others dingy, and displaying the truncated angles and inferior materials of the ’thirties. There were also the lofty, rickety-seeming, barn-like structures where the actual shooting was done, and small sheds, cloakrooms and offices; and the whole was surrounded by gravelled walks and beds of flowers looking as if set down by nurserymen rather than planted by gardeners. In the near distance were the surprisingly high and green Kent hills. There was nothing shabby or going-downhill about the place. It exuded prosperity, and even paid some tribute to Beauty and Craftsmanship; the wrought-iron gates through which all visitors must enter were as graceful as they were well made.

“Now—what would you like to see?” Christopher said to her, when he had parked the car; “we’ve got about half an hour before lunch. Mr Burke usually lunches at half past, and I want to be certain of getting a table near the one he always has, so we must be in there in good time. But we can stroll around a bit, if you’d like to. Don’t you think it all looks interesting?”

Ydette merely nodded, while seeming doubtful. She was in her natural state of being unable to say what she was feeling. That did not matter at home, where no-one ever asked her what she felt, and where in any case her feelings were usually pleasant. But here——! The stark-white buildings and squat little sheds were ugly. The sky seemed to be sitting on top of you. The hills were pretty, but she never had been one for hills, preferring to any picture of mountains the placid levels, through which the eye could wander here and there recognizing a spire or a farm, of home. And when she thought about the places she had seen on the pictures, where beautiful and wonderful people lived, and remembered that it was here those films were made—she felt so bewildered that it was actually painful; her mind seemed to be aching inside her head.

“Let’s go and look at the Pacific Ocean,” Christopher said.

She did not know what on earth he meant. But when they were standing before the enormous tank of water which filled all the foreground and was backed by a tremendous sheet of metal, chemically stained to a tender, tremulous and unchanging blue, that represented a tropic sky, she actually turned pale.

“This is where they take the shots for scenes at sea,” Christopher volubly explained; “they can whip up quite a storm, with various machines, on that, you know, and if they want a blazing hot day, there’s the sky. It’s been up there for two years now and it’s as blue as ever. Pretty good, isn’t it? Look at the reflection in the water.”

Ydette looked; it was an exquisite colour, the more so for the background of common greys and greens and browns behind it. Then she gazed up at the smiling incorruptibility of the sheet of tinted metal; unchanged, undimmed or damaged by the rains and fogs of two winters, looming with a kind of incongruous beauty and permanence over the dull scene. Something about it frightened her very much.

“What?” said Christopher, turning.

“It is frightening,” she said in an almost inaudible voice, and turned away.

“And there are the models they use if they want a long shot across the tank,” he said, thinking that her present expression and pallor were not becoming and hoping she would have cheered up by lunch-time; “they’re exact models of the people acting in that particular scene. Look, there’s——” and he named a world-famous male star who was one of Ydette’s favourites, and indicated one of several little figures that had been dumped on a bench beside the tank.

“No!” said Ydette, after a quick, fearful glance.

“No?” he repeated, amused. “Don’t you like them?”

“No—no—no. They are——” She had an expression of absolute distress and her lips were trembling as she struggled hopelessly to say what she was feeling.

“Yes, I suppose they are a bit startling, if you haven’t seen any before.” He casually drew her arm into his own, and felt it shaking. “If you were given to practising black magic, they’d be very useful, I feel. But you don’t know what I mean, so let’s come and have some lunch, and do cheer up. Just think—in a few months you may be able to buy your aunts a washing-machine.”

He had chosen this contemporary symbol of delight as being the one most likely to ravish the senses of the aunts: it was perhaps as well that Ydette was now feeling too frightened, confused and wretched to bring out the ungrateful “They don’t want one” which was trembling on her lips. But she knew they didn’t, because Aunt Marie had often said where on earth would they put one if they had it? and electricity costing so much, too …

“There’s no need to be frightened,” he went on; “you haven’t got to do anything. Just be perfectly natural and enjoy your lunch. I’ll do the rest.”

“I am not frightened,” she said, with an intonation and expression that was suddenly all stubborn Flemish, “I am hungry.”

“Splendid. Come along, then.”

They passed several people on their way to the restaurant, who hailed Christopher. But those glances of startled interest at Ydette, followed by longer ones of professional appraisal and topped up by a look of envious respect at himself as discoverer of a potential new ‘big one’—these simply did not occur. Bryan Martin did give Ydette a once-over but, with his reputation with women, that didn’t count. For the first time, Christopher began to wish that he had never carried his plan any further than the day-dream stage.

He also began to blame Ydette. Why must she look so uninteresting just today? His colleagues no doubt supposed she was some wholesome Dutch lassie whom he was escorting to an au pair job with his aunt. And why must she be so unexcited, so almost shocked, by the studio devices which he had been showing her? Really, he was inclined sometimes to think that she was very slightly mentally deficient. An incipient neurotic, perhaps. But if once she became a ‘big one’, that might easily be an advantage.

However, as they sat down at a table actually next to the one always occupied by Burke, he realized that none of the people who had ignored her held any important status in the studio. None of them possessed sufficient imagination to see what possibilities lay in that profile, those cheek-bones, eyes and length of neck. Let Burke once get a look at her and his reaction, Christopher still felt almost sure, would be very different.

The restaurant awed Ydette, yet she liked it. None of those to which she had been with Christopher or Nora had been as grand as this, with its walls and ceiling dappled in cloudy gold and a plushy gold carpet covering the floor. And at tables near to them there were surprising hats above vivid faces to look at; there were even one or two that she had seen on the pictures, although she did not recognize them until Mijnheer Chris pointed them out to her. She could not really enjoy her first mouthfuls of English roast beef, because she was wondering when this bioscoop man would come in and look at her, but undoubtedly she did begin to feel a little better. The picture of that blue sky, uncanny as some enchanter’s mirage against the everyday background, was beginning to fade.

Christopher, finishing his own roast beef with an eye on the door, was not feeling better. He had to keep telling himself not to become agitated; nothing solid was actually at stake. But it was useless; for although hundreds of thousands of pounds couldn’t exactly be regarded as lost if Burke didn’t like her looks, they would undoubtedly be set in circulation if he did. And there were certain to be pickings, as there was certain to be the prestige attached to him as her discoverer.

He did not calm himself by hastily beginning an explanation (long meditated but frequently deferred) about the reasons for Ida’s not coming to London to see Ydette: half term and its excursion to town was just over; work for summer examinations was in full swing; there were tennis matches at the school, and so forth. But in fact, his father had severely forbidden Ida to go, saying that fares mounted up and Christopher’s friends were not suitable for someone aged eleven.

He had wondered why Everard’s voice had sounded so annoyed, but it was probably only part of his father’s general reaction against Belgium which seemed to have set in ever since that holiday at Bruges.

Ydette listened with a dejected expression. The photograph of Ida on Nora’s table, in shorts and shirt and racquet, several inches taller, well-developed and frowning menacingly against the sun, looked almost totally unlike the square and friendly child of four years ago and she wasn’t really sorry that this stranger had been unable to come. But it was another sad little thing to happen; another thing to increase her loneliness.

And suddenly loneliness absolutely burst within her, like something starting to cry. She turned cold with it, and actually glanced up at Christopher in desperate appeal.

“What on earth’s up?” he demanded, staring. “Are you feeling ill?”

She shook her head. But the fatal lump was coming up in her long throat, and at that precise moment, and no other (it would be, Christopher thought savagely, staring at her), there was a stir at the entrance to the room; heads turned, there wasn’t exactly a murmur but people were whispering, and then, in a kind of procession, down the long room came Marcus Elver, Frank Page and Jon Burke, followed by a very large American publisher in a suit of the very finest dark wool that could possibly be dreamed up and bought, and wearing on his wide yellow face an expression that seemed to be saying: go on, amuse me. Make me want something that I can’t buy. Convince me that someone exists who isn’t buyable and rotten. Go on, I’m waiting. Not that I should care if you did.

They approached, wafting before them a smell of cigar-smoke and alcohol, and as they settled themselves at the next table, Burke just caught Christopher’s eye and gave him a tiny nod.

So far, so good. But it was plain to Christopher that they had been having one of their rows, in which the American had presumably been the guest-artist. They gave their orders in a glum undertone, and, being served, proceeded to shovel the food in, or somnolently pick at it, according to their natures. People accustomed to venerate the artistic temperament would have said that their creative urges were being frustrated: others, accustomed to nursery behaviour, might have murmured sulks. But whatever explanation was given to their overclouded looks, anyone would think twice about choosing this occasion to introduce someone to them.

“What sweets, sir?” the waitress asked.

Christopher, in an extraordinary mixture of hope and rage that had the curious effect of making him feel as if he were watching the scene from somewhere a long way away, took the menu. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ydette’s pale face, her head well lifted and her large eyes fastened sadly on his own. Her head and her braids well displayed, anyway, on top of that ravishing white giraffe’s neck. But how odd she looked, how—almost silly. The typical queer, laughable foreigner.

And then, as he picked up the menu, he saw Jon Burke lift from his plate his long, rangy head with its thinning, bright hair and look round the room. His eyes, with the one famous drooping passerine lid, travelled slowly past the humorous faces and the challenging hats as if they were not there, and came to rest—on the face of Ydette. His glance alighted, and it lingered. The glance became a stare.

Christopher almost began to tremble. He said casually, “What would you like, Ydette?” forcing himself to keep looking at the list he held before him—but then, because in spite of all the bad luck beforehand, the unlikely, the so-desired thing had after all happened, and the most famous director in the Western World was sitting six feet away, with eyes fixed on the girl whom Christopher had first seen as a potential star four years ago on the sands of Zandeburghe—he added in an excited little burst of kindness:

“How about ice-cream? I know you like that, don’t you?”

She sprang up from her seat, made a loud sniffling, choking sound, bent her head and, blundering out from between their table and Burke’s, made her way clumsily but quickly down the length of the room and almost ran through the swing doors and out of the restaurant.

“Here!” Christopher exclaimed, springing up, “Ydette …!”

Heads were turning, every face in the room, with expressions of amusement, surprise, irritation, was turning to watch the hasty flight; then back to the table where the girl had been sitting. And Christopher saw Jon Burke drop his eyes indifferently, then bend forward to re-arrange the table-cloth, which had been dragged awry by Ydette in her passing.

Christopher began, without any haste and after a bewildered shrug at the waitress, to make his way down the room and after her.

I know just what he’s thinking (his furious thoughts raced as he moved composedly between the tables): he thinks it’s a put-up job; that I told her to sit down under his nose and make a scene so that he couldn’t fail to notice her. It’s the one thing that would make him angrier than anything else—the one fatal thing—a gimmick, a story for the admass press—something contrived. The one thing that’ll make him absolutely determined never to think about her, or me, or her face, again.

When I get hold of her I’ll kill her.

But when he did get hold of her—standing as if unable to go any farther beside the immense tank of water reflecting the chemical blue sky, and staring out across it with a kind of horror on her face—he wasn’t just angry with her any more. The whole idea had failed stone-dead; perhaps it never could have succeeded anyway, and now the only thing to do was to get her back to Bruges as quickly as possible.

“Hullo, Ydette,” he said with simple, deadly kindness, slipping his arm through hers. “What was the matter? Were you frightened?”

She shook her head, and then she turned and looked at him. In a minute, he laughed and gently shook the arm he held.

“It’s all right, velvet-eyes,” he said; “come on, let’s go home.”

They did not talk as they walked back to where he had parked the car. The fact was that he had suddenly felt so fond of her—exactly as he was of Dogfight and that poor ass Nolly, and as he had never, not even in their early days, felt of Susan—that he couldn’t feel the faintest anger with her any more.