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with nut-brown face who was his father: who talked to him so incomprehensibly and gave him elaborate presents of fishing rods and bicycles and unreadable books; who reproved boyish tricks and jokes with a calm kindness more terrifying than any anger could have been. In the brief intervals from sporting triumphs which Anthony spent at home he came slowly to the realisation that his father adhered to a scale of values in which an ability to turn the new ball both ways or to sell the dummy played an inconsiderable part. Not by any word or gesture did Mr Shelton show a lack of interest in his son’s sporting achievements; yet Anthony was painfully conscious that he must be a disappointment to the old man who added to his immense knowledge of the world, and his ability to conduct business deals with the hard-faced men who sometimes came to their home, intellectual interests which were expressed for his son in the frequent study of booksellers’ lists and his excitement over the purchases which he sometimes made from them. When he came down from Oxford Anthony was subject to a severe emotional stress in feeling that he was not worthy of his father, and to a schizophrenic desire and distaste for his projected career as a cricketer.
    Then he met Victoria – and met her, as it happened, through his father, when Mr Shelton, who was known in the district to possess a considerable library, was asked to address the Barnsfield Literary Society on “How to Collect Books”. Anthony conscientiously attended this lecture, and his attention wavered sometimes from his father’s humorous description of the circumstances which induced him to break a youthful vow that he would never buy a book which cost more than half a crown. It wavered because of the uncomfortable knowledge that a young woman at the other side of the room was gazing at him with peculiar fixity. The young woman (whose gaze had been fixed by his Greek beauty) was Victoria Rawlings; and when she talked to him over the cups of weak tea and date sandwiches, which accompanied the lecture, he was delighted to discover that she was a really well-read girl. She had written a novel – or part of a novel; she painted – or attended a School of Art; and she mentioned airily names, which impressed him, even though he heard them for the first time. He was still more impressed, and even alarmed, when she said that art was in her blood, and that her grandfather was Martin Rawlings (a name which, like the other names she mentioned, was strange to him). The effect of her conversation was enhanced by the thick dark hair which she wore cut square in a fringe, by her rich, yearning eyes and slightly-parted lips; and his enchantment was complete when Victoria expressed emphatically her disinterest in all sporting activities – a full life, she said, could be lived only in the mind.
    She invited him to tea, and he met her brother Edward, who seemed rather disagreeable, and her mother, Muriel, who was certainly scatterbrained. Neither her mother nor brother seemed to Anthony to value Victoria at her true intellectual worth, and he said as much to her. She murmured the word “Philistines”, and in a heaven of self-abasement Anthony said: “But I’m a Philistine too – I’m an awful fool, you know.” Beneath the fringe, Victoria’s long face looked pensive as he gasped suddenly: “Will you marry me?” Slowly and solemnly she nodded, and then said: “Not if you continue to play cricket.” Gleefully, without the semblance of a sigh, Anthony made the sacrifice; and as he kissed her, he thought with pleasure of his father’s delight.
    When he announced the engagement, however, with the nervousness that always oppressed him in dealing with his father, Mr Shelton showed no particular pleasure. He looked at his son for a moment or two without speaking, and then said: “You are very young.”
    “I’m twenty-two.”
    “Precisely.” Mr Shelton brought the tips of his slender fingers