Brockett, rather subdued and distinctly pensive as sometimes happened if Valérie had snubbed him, complained of a pain above his right eye: ‘I must take some phenacetin,’ he said sadly, ‘I’m always getting this curious pain above my right eye—do you think it’s the sinus?’ He was very intolerant of all pain. His hostess sent for the phenacetin, and Brockett gulped down a couple of tablets: ‘Valérie doesn’t love me any more,’ he sighed, with a woebegone look at Stephen. ‘I do call it hard, but it’s always what happens when I introduce my best friends to each other—they foregather at once and leave me in the cold; but then, thank heaven, I’m very forgiving.’ They laughed and Valérie made him get on to the divan where he promptly lay down on the lute. ‘Oh God!’ he moaned, ‘now I’ve injured my spine—I’m so badly upholstered.’ Then he started to strum on the one sound string of the lute. Valérie went over to her untidy desk and began to write out a list of addresses: ‘These may be useful to you, Miss Gordon.’ ‘Stephen!’ exclaimed Brockett, ‘Call the poor woman Stephen!’ ‘May I?’ Stephen acquiesced: ‘Yes, please do.’ ‘Very well then, I’m Valérie. Is that a bargain?’ ‘The bargain is sealed,’ announced Brockett. With extraordinary skill he was managing to strum ‘O Sole Mio’ on the single string, when he suddenly stopped: ‘I knew there was something—your fencing, Stephen, you’ve forgotten your fencing. We meant to ask Valérie for Buisson’s address; they say he’s the finest master in Europe.’ Valérie looked up: ‘Does Stephen fence, then?’ ‘Does she fence! She’s a marvellous, champion fencer.’ ‘He’s never seen me fence,’ explained Stephen, ‘and I’m never likely to be a champion.’ ‘Don’t you believe her, she’s trying to be modest. I’ve heard that she fences quite as finely as she writes,’ he insisted. And somehow Stephen felt touched, Brockett was trying to show off her talents. Presently she offered him a lift in the car, but he shook his head: ‘No, thank you, dear one, I’m staying.’ So she wished them good-bye; but as she left them she heard Brockett murmuring to Valérie Seymour, and she felt pretty sure that she caught her own name. 6 ‘Well, what did you think of Miss Seymour?’ inquired Puddle, when Stephen got back about twenty minutes later. Stephen hesitated: ‘I’m not perfectly certain. She was very friendly, but I couldn’t help feeling that she liked me because she thought me—oh, well, because she thought me what I am, Puddle. But I may have been wrong—she was awfully friendly. Brockett was at his very worst though, poor devil! His environment seemed to go to his head.’ She sank down wearily on to a chair: ‘Oh, Puddle, Puddle, it’s a hell of a business.’ Puddle nodded. Then Stephen said rather abruptly: ‘All the same, we’re going to live here in Paris. We’re going to look at a house to-morrow, an old house with a garden in the Rue Jacob.’