Mrs. Bittell was sitting in her flat in the expensive block nearly opposite the church, among the wrongs and relics of her seventy years, when Sidney first came.

“Deliveries round the corner, second door,” the doorman said.

“I’m a friend of Mrs. Bittell’s,” said Sidney.

The doorman’s chestload of medals flashed. “Why didn’t you say you were a friend?” he said, looking Sidney up and down. “Seventh floor.”

“A very disagreeable man,” said Mrs. Bittell when Sidney told her this, his wounded chin raised. She was a puddingly woman, reposing on a big sleepy belly; her hair was white and she had innocent blue eyes. She wore, as usual, a loosely knitted pink jersey, low in the neck, a heather-mixture skirt, flat-heeled shoes, and was very short. Her family had been army people and at first she thought Sidney rather civilian in a disappointing way when he was not wearing the red jacket he wore in the shop, as she led him across the wide old-fashioned panelled hall of her flat into the full light of her large drawing-room, which, in addition to her furniture and pictures, owned a large part of the London sky where the clouds prospered: one looked down on the tops of three embassies and across to the creamy stucco of a long square.