He went at last. Another waltz began and Rosemary smiled remotely at her, dancing past with a Robert vivacious again, the little flame leaping to a new conflagration. Behind her a voice said:

‘Ah, there you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

She turned to him and knew she was not concealing her gladness. He swept her in among the dancers. She thought how strange it was that dancing with Colonel Storn-Miller, or Robert, or Alfred, there was the physical movement, deliberately made, with one’s mind directing limbs and the music as a pattern to which to hold. And yet dancing with Lionel there was no such direction – hardly even volition – and their two bodies and the music and colour and warmth were all together on a plane beyond thought and prudence.

Lionel said: ‘I’ve been thinking of what you said …’

It was an excuse to look up at him brightly, to rest her eyes on the deep lines of strength and the curves of gentleness.

‘… about remembering,’ he went on. ‘It’s still hard. Some must be good at visualising. John, for instance. He can probably call back a thousand scenes at will, with his artist’s eye. And you, too, have it perhaps. I haven’t though.’

Looking up, knowing she would never forget those lines, those curves, the fine gleam of light on that moustache, she said:

‘You have to love what you see to remember it. Then it doesn’t matter what – who – it is. You can never forget. Never.’

The waltz was round her, like the branches of a broad tree lifting to the sun.