Also he would have had a home of his own, and a family to return to, instead of wandering aimlessly with nowhere he wanted to go. That was what he ought to have done, yet he had carelessly thrown away even the half-happiness such a marriage would have brought him. Now he had nothing; no love, no family, nothing!

It had been entirely his own fault. The opportunity had been there, at Jablanka in the middle of December, and if he had failed to take the opportunity offered he had no one but himself to blame. But he had done nothing.

His host, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, and his sons had welcomed him as warmly as ever, without being over-demonstrative which in that house was thought to be not very good form. His cousin Magda’s greeting was a shade more enthusiastic, for she gave him a teasing smile and pressed his hand a little harder than was usual. His aunt Elise, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi, received him with maternal warmth and tenderness and somehow, though without ever alluding to the matter, contrived to let him know how much she approved of, and would encourage, his marrying Lili. It was clear to Balint that they all knew that that was why he had come to Jablanka, and that everyone was in favour. Canon Czibulka, or Pfaffulus as he was nicknamed in that house, an old and intimate friend of the Szent-Gyorgyis, also discreetly showed that he approved the match by giving a special antenna-like movement of his bushy eyebrows when he first shook Balint by the hand. Pfaffulus had already been at Jablanka for several days as the shoot had been held unusually late and, as Advent had already begun, he came over daily from Nagy-Szombat to say mass in the castle chapel. The priest’s tacit approval warmed Balint’s heart for it made him feel that in that house everyone knew about and looked kindly on his plans to ask Lili to marry him.

All the same he did not see her until all the guests assembled in the lofty stucco-decorated drawing-room which had been the monks’ refectory before the former monastery became the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country home. She came in from the library, which was at the opposite end of the room from where Balint was standing, seeming almost to glide weightlessly across the highly polished wooden floor. She was dressed in a flowing white tulle gown and she moved with that quiet assurance natural to girls brought up in the highest society. As she crossed the room she nodded to those other guests she had already seen and went up to greet two new arrivals, the guests of honour who had just come from Vienna. Once again Abady smiled as he admired the impeccable way in which she moved, reflecting how perfectly she fitted into those grand surroundings and what a perfect background was formed for her by the great white hall-like room, the crimson and gold furniture and the huge family portraits in their elaborate frames. For all the apparent frailty of the girl, as she moved slowly round that luxurious room in her diaphanous creamy white dress, her step as light as that of any butterfly, one could still sense that inner core of steel that was the mark of her race.

So this, thought Balint, is the girl who is going to be my wife! Infinitely well-bred, the scion of countless generations whose sons and daughters, being always rich and independent, had never needed to marry some ugly ducking for her dowry or accept anyone second-rate for his money. Now she had nearly come up to where he stood. She did not increase her speed nor for a moment change her demeanour; and yet there was something special in the movement she made in putting out her hand to him, in the yielding softness with which she took his, and in the joyful flash of her corn-flower blue eyes.

Balint sensed it all at once and knew exactly what it meant.

During the three days of shooting Lili was often to be found beside him and remained with him for the whole of the most important beat on the third day when once again Balint found himself allotted the place of honour at the extreme right hand end of the line of guns. They somehow seemed to spend hours together, and even on those long afternoon walks on which, of course, they were never alone but always accompanied by several other young people, the two of them often seemed to be left to walk some twenty or thirty paces behind the others. And then Lili, who otherwise was lively and talkative, would remain silent, leaving it to him to decide what they would talk about. She was hoping he would propose: and that is when he ought to have done so, either in the long hornbeam avenue or else when coming back from visiting the thoroughbred mares.

Recalling that moment Balint conjured up in his mind the thin layer of powdery snow that covered the frozen ground and which had crackled under their feet. The others had lingered by the fences of the paddocks and that is when he should have spoken. It was there that he ought to have uttered those few banal words that were the classic form of suggesting marriage. And yet for some reason he had held back and said nothing. Stupidly he had said nothing. Had he felt that in that wintry landscape his voice would sound too matter-of-fact, too cold and businesslike, too unspontaneous? But of course he knew then, just as he knew now, that it would not have mattered how he had said it, for the girl had only been waiting for him to speak.

Balint stopped at the bridge over the mill-stream. For a moment he thought of going on into the park, which at that hour would be completely deserted, and he walked on a few steps before reflecting how silly it would be to get his patent leather evening shoes all muddied just before he went to the Prefect’s evening party. Far better to go where he could stay on the side-walk, where the slight humidity from that afternoon’s rain would have left few traces. So he continued along the road which led to the railway station.

As he wandered so aimlessly in the night Balint thought back to that time a year before when he had spent so many autumn evenings just wandering about the streets as aimlessly as he was now doing. Anything, he had thought, to keep on the move and quiet his growing anxiety as he waited for Adrienne’s letter, that letter which would at long last announce that she had started the business of her divorce.