I was content to wait now. I waited, relaxed on small haunches, in the west corner, the one from which the mechanical airship used to set out on its jerky, wire-suspended flight towards the patient Rodney. Water dripped from the cracked pipe overhead, meticulously falling to meet the stained patch of tiling beside my right foot. I could set the very hour to that impression. The framed Craxton leering from the incongruous wall was from a different hour, but was not strange on that account. All hours were here.

I waited until the door opened and I woke with a shock, sweating, in my ordinary bedroom in Regency Gardens. Even in the vivid aftermath of dream I could not remember who it was that I had known would come through the conservatory door. But I knew who had come. I lay back in bed, breathing heavily, remembering the door opening and Piers’s small figure advancing across the threshold to meet me.