‘Parties are rather a waste of time, aren’t they?’ she said.

Burlap nodded. ‘A waste of time,’ he echoed in his slow ruminant’s voice, keeping his blank preoccupied eyes fixed on the invisible daemon standing a little to Beatrice’s left. ‘One’s forty, one has lived more than half one’s life, the world is marvellous and mysterious. And yet one spends four hours chattering about nothing at Tantamount House. Why should triviality be so fascinating? Or is there something else beside the triviality that draws one? Is it some vague fantastic hope that one may meet the messianic person one’s always been looking for, or hear the revealing word?’ Burlap wagged his head as he spoke with a curious loose motion, as though the muscles of his neck were going limp. Beatrice was so familiar with the motion that she saw nothing strange in it any more. Waiting for the milk to boil, she listened admiringly, she watched him with a serious church-going face. A man whose excursions into the drawing-rooms of the rich were episodes in a lifelong spiritual quest might justifiably be regarded as the equivalent of Sunday morning church.

‘All the same,’ Burlap added, glancing up at her with a sudden mischievous, gutter-snipish grin, most startingly unlike the Sodoma smile of a moment before, ‘the champaign and the caviar were really marvellous.’