The two ladies were at home and alone beside a big fire that seemed wonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I remember the effect of the little parlour in which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady Osprey, in a costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played an elaborately spread-out patience by the light of a tall shaded lamp; Beatrice, in a whiteness that showed her throat, smoked a cigarette in an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow. The room was white-panelled and chintz-curtained. About those two bright centres of light were warm dark shadow, in which a circular mirror shone like a pool of brown water. I carried off my raid by behaving like a slave of etiquette. There were moments when I think I really made Lady Osprey believe that my call was an unavoidable necessity, that it would have been negligent of me not to call just how and when I did. But at the best those were transitory moments. They received me with disciplined amazement. Lady Osprey was interested in my face and scrutinised the scar. Beatrice stood behind her solicitude. Our eyes met, and in hers I could see startled interrogations. “I’m going,” I said, “to the west coast of Africa.” They asked questions, but it suited my mood to be vague. “We’ve interests there. It is urgent I should go. I don’t know when I may return.” After that I perceived Beatrice surveyed me steadily. The conversation was rather difficult. I embarked upon lengthy thanks for their kindness to me after my accident. I tried to understand Lady Osprey’s game of patience, but it didn’t appear that Lady Osprey was anxious for me to understand her patience. I came to the verge of taking my leave. “You needn’t go yet,” said Beatrice, abruptly. She walked across to the piano, took a pile of music from the cabinet near, surveyed Lady Osprey’s back, and with a gesture to me dropped it all deliberately on to the floor. “Must talk,” she said, kneeling close to me as I helped her to pick it up. “Turn my pages. At the piano.” “I can’t read music.” “Turn my pages.” Presently we were at the piano, and Beatrice was playing with noisy inaccuracy. She glanced over her shoulder and Lady Osprey had resumed her patience. The old lady was very pink, and appeared to be absorbed in some attempt to cheat herself without our observing it. “Isn’t West Africa a vile climate?” “Are you going to live there?” “Why are you going?” Beatrice asked these questions in a low voice and gave me no chance to answer. Then taking a rhythm from the music before her, she said— “At the back of the house is a garden—a door in the wall—on the lane. Understand?” I turned over the pages without any effect on her playing. “When?” I asked. She dealt in chords. “I wish I _could_ play this!” she said. “Midnight.” She gave her attention to the music for a time. “You may have to wait.” “I’ll wait.” She brought her playing to an end by—as school boys say—“stashing it up.”