“It looks all right,” said Capes.

“I think everything’s right,” said Ann Veronica, with the roaming eye of a capable but not devoted house-mistress.

“I wonder if they will seem altered,” she remarked for the third time.

“There I can’t help,” said Capes.

He walked through a wide open archway, curtained with deep-blue curtains, into the apartment that served as a reception-room.  Ann Veronica, after a last survey of the dinner appointments, followed him, rustling, came to his side by the high brass fender, and touched two or three ornaments on the mantel above the cheerful fireplace.

“It’s still a marvel to me that we are to be forgiven,” she said, turning.

“My charm of manner, I suppose.  But, indeed, he’s very human.”

“Did you tell him of the registry office?”

“No—­o—­certainly not so emphatically as I did about the play.”

“It was an inspiration—­your speaking to him?”

“I felt impudent.  I believe I am getting impudent.  I had not been near the Royal Society since—­since you disgraced me.  What’s that?”

They both stood listening.  It was not the arrival of the guests, but merely the maid moving about in the hall.

“Wonderful man!” said Ann Veronica, reassured, and stroking his cheek with her finger.

Capes made a quick movement as if to bite that aggressive digit, but it withdrew to Ann Veronica’s side.

“I was really interested in his stuff.  I was talking to him before I saw his name on the card beside the row of microscopes.  Then, naturally, I went on talking.  He—­he has rather a poor opinion of his contemporaries.  Of course, he had no idea who I was.”

“But how did you tell him?  You’ve never told me.  Wasn’t it—­a little bit of a scene?”

“Oh! let me see.  I said I hadn’t been at the Royal Society soiree for four years, and got him to tell me about some of the fresh Mendelian work.  He loves the Mendelians because he hates all the big names of the eighties and nineties.  Then I think I remarked that science was disgracefully under-endowed, and confessed I’d had to take to more profitable courses.  ‘The fact of it is,’ I said, ’I’m the new playwright, Thomas More.  Perhaps you’ve heard—?’ Well, you know, he had.”

“Fame!”

“Isn’t it?  ‘I’ve not seen your play, Mr. More,’ he said, ’but I’m told it’s the most amusing thing in London at the present time.  A friend of mine, Ogilvy’—­I suppose that’s Ogilvy & Ogilvy, who do so many divorces, Vee?—­’was speaking very highly of it—­very highly!’” He smiled into her eyes.

“You are developing far too retentive a memory for praises,” said Ann Veronica.

“I’m still new to them.  But after that it was easy.  I told him instantly and shamelessly that the play was going to be worth ten thousand pounds.  He agreed it was disgraceful.  Then I assumed a rather portentous manner to prepare him.”